Everything you know is wrong
by MeltingPenguins
Summary: An alternate timeline AU for season 9. Sam and Dean find themselves at a random motel one morning, with no idea how they got there, and the distinct feeling that things aren't going the way they should go. Or are they? ((Set in season 9, alternate timeline.))
1. Living History

Night, a country road somewhere in New England.  
Dean was drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel, drawing a face as if he was short of biting it.  
"Two words", he finally hollered, instantly drawing his brother's attention, and holding up two fingers, eyes fixed in a warning glare on the road ahead. "What happened?"  
Sam sighed and combed his fingers through his hair, rolling his eyes as if he tried to follow the movement, waiting patiently for Dean to continue after the rhethorical question.  
And Dean did continue:  
"Six hours ago I was sitting with you in the hospital with you dying, and then -bam- we wake up in a Motel in the middle of Massachusetts."  
Sam leaned back in his seat.  
What they knew for certain was this: They knew they had no idea where or how Castiel was, they knew they somehow had missed how they lost Crowley, they knew the angels were pissed, but what they knew with absolute certainity was that they didn't have the slightest clue what happened.  
"Maybe it had something to do with the trial or..." Sam tried, grasping for straws.  
"Glove compartment", Dean suddenly interrupted in all seriousness.  
"What?"  
"What?"  
"You said glove compartment."  
"Did not."  
"Did too."  
"Why?"  
To avoid any further argument Sam opened the place in question, producing a neatly folded letter.  
"Probably this... 'Dear Sam, dear me'" he started reading, "Things got rebooted because you were acting like the guys that die in the Prologue. Dean'"  
"What?"  
"'S your writing"  
Dean snatched the letter.  
"Son of a... What's that supposed to mean now?"  
"Beats me."  
Dean's eyes flicked between the road and the letter.  
"'PS: If you meet E. stab him in the face'" he read before frowning "Tell you what, Sam: Next time I write a letter to myself remind me to explain things."  
Sam was about to answer when something on the road ahead caught his attention. It was a woman, staring bewildered at the car approaching, holding something in her hand.  
"Dean!"  
There was no chance to stop in time. The Impala screeched to a hold and both brothers turned around, looking at the road behind them. There had been no sound indicating they had hit something, no impact, no nothing.  
"Dude", Dean blinked, "We just ran over a ghost, right?"  
"I'd say so."  
"Well", Dean started the engine again, only to move the Impala further to the side of the road. "Let's have a look."  
Sam scrambled after his brother as Dean left the car, heading for the trunk.  
"Dean, hold up. What did you say in the letter? The Prologue-Guy thing?"  
But Dean had already snatched stuff from the trunk: "Prologue-Guys", demonstratively he racked he slide on the shotgun he was holding, accompanied with a shit-eating grin, "Are short on these."  
Sam smacked his lips and followed, armed with a gun and flashlight.  
It didn't take long till they did find something indeed. Not a ghost, but not too far from where they had ran into and through the apparition, lay a small heap of ashes. Far too little for anything the size of a human, not really anything usual for a ghost, and especially not with bits of paper in them.

There was this restaurant in South Hadley, Massachusetts.  
On an usual day, it'd be a fine place to eat. People would come, people would go.  
People would not, on an usual day, suddenly jump up from their seat choking and screaming, short to throwing up, as they had just discovered a few human teeth in their meal.

"I know where we're not going to eat," Dean announced and heavily sat down on his brother's motel bed, waking that one. Sam, in return, made a grunting sound, akin to 'Wsflg?'.  
"Read this."  
With the speed of a continental drift Sam sat up, rubbed his eyes and shook his head at his brother, before taking the newspaper Dean had thrown him.  
"'A biting smack'," Sam read, "'Last Night, 'Elliot's Bar&Grill' in South Hadley, was the site of a gruesome discovery as a number of guests found human teeth in their meals. As there was no evidence for a crime, the local police suspects someone playing a cruel prank on the restaurant.'" Sam frowned, still in the process of waking up. Hunter or anything else he had seen and done or not, this was no news he wanted to read on an empty stomach. The grin Dean gave him made clear that Dean was fully aware of that.  
"The best part", Dean said then, "That's the fifth time in a month that happened."  
Sam furrowed his brows.  
"Why exactly are you showing me this?"  
"Thought it'd be nice to know that the world's still weird," Dean rose again and stretched.  
Sending his brother a long, cold look, Sam shook his head again.  
"Dean, what is it?", he asked dryly.  
Dean rolled his eyes and frowned, and sat back down on his bed.  
"It's the fact that we're here," he grunted, "We ought to be somewhere else, I just know it. I mean, you should be in hospital, Crowley should be in the trunk and we should be anywhere but here. I want to know what happened, Sam. I want to know who healed you. I want to know who took Crowley. And I want to know where Cas is."  
Dean dug his fingers into the bedsheet, glaring at nothing in particular. Not angry. Not enraged. Confused, yes. Maybe even a little bit worried. And very annoyed. He had been in this mood since they had woken up in another motel about a day back, no recollection of what happened. Then the almost-encounter of the night before had happened, and Sam had urged his brother to spent the night at the next motel, before anything else went awry. Why exactly he did that, he couldn't tell. It wasn't the first time he'd seen Dean in that mood after all.  
"Do you think I don't want answers, too?" Sam responded, "When stuff like this happens…"  
He was abruptly cut off as a terrified scream rang from outside.  
Exchanging a quick and alarmed look Sam and Dean rushed outside, just in time to see a young woman storm out of her room, clad in nothing but a towel and drenched in blood.  
"That… does beat the tooth story" observed Dean, brows quirked.

The woman's name was Hazel. She was 27, here on a holiday, and currently shaking all over, wrapped up in a thick bathrobe in the motel's office.  
By now the police was there, too, and she was telling what had happened.  
"I just wanted to take a shower", she had said, clutching a cup of tea, "And then there was all this blood…"  
The officer that had been talking to her, turned to her colleague as they left the building a little later, leaving the manager to take care of Hazel.  
"Same thing as over in South Hadley two weeks back", Sam and Dean, who were standing nearby, having listened to the conversation, overheard her say, "This is getting creepy, if you ask me."  
As the officials got back into their car, Dean nudged his brother, who had just returned from sneaking into Hazel's room.  
"Heard that?"  
"South Hadley. The town from the papers. Dean, I checked, her whole bathroom is covered in blood."  
"And our water was fine. Tell you what. Teeth in someone's meal could be a prank, but water turning to blood in several places but not at all of all those places at once screams 'get a hunter' to me."  
Sam nodded. "Me too. Let's go."

"Agents Blackpoole and Sterling, Sir", Dean introduced himself and Sam to the man living at the house with the number 231. "Could we talk to you about your daughter?"  
There was the obligatory 'I already told'-dialogue on the way into the living room, but once they were seated, the man, a Mister Lake (43-years old, married to Martha Lake, father of two), began to tell his story again.  
He had sat down heavily, bent forward, wringing his hands. It took him a moment, filled with frowns and head shakes.  
"Mr Lake, we believe what happened to your daughter was done by someone pulling similar pranks on various other people and institutions in the area," said Sam, flipping open a notebook.  
"Like that thing with the teeth at Elliot's?"  
"Like that. Please tell us what happened and what you know."  
"Jenny's still all shaken up", Mr Lake said. "Can't blame her. Have you ever taken a shower and suddenly all that was coming from the pipes was pig's blood?-" he rubbed his forehead. "She came here for Martha's -my wife, her mother- birthday all the way from New York. She's a model, you know? Very busy one. But never failed to make space for our birthdays. We wanted to go out for dinner and she just wanted to take a quick shower to get ready. Martha, Toby -our son- and I had showered before and all was fine, but then… Who would do such a thing?"  
Mr Lake drew a face clearly indicating that he was trying to make sense of something that made no sense at all.  
"That's what we are here to find out", Dean answered, smiling a trust-winning smile.  
"I can't help you with anything new, however. So you think there's someone out there putting blood in water pipes and teeth in patties? That's disgusting."  
"Somewhat, Sir," said Dean and rose, "Did you notice anything odd that evening?"  
"Nothing," said Mr Lake, but then leaned back, starting to think, "That is… When we cleaned the shower then… No, I don't think that has anything to do with that."  
"No, please go ahead and tell us. Everything might be important."  
Mr Lake eyed the two sitting opposite of him for a moment, before sighing, "It's really dumb. There were burned bits of paper all over the bathroom. But they probably flew in from outside. Someone burning things or what do I know."  
Sam and Dean exchanged meaningful looks, after which they thanked Mr Lake for his help and left.  
"Burned paper…", Dean stated as they walked down the stairs leading up to number 231, "Just like when we ran over that ghost. Do we know any ghosts that vanish in pieces of burned paper?"  
"I'd be worried 'bout something else."  
"And what?"  
"That blood in the motel was not pig's blood, Dean. And I doubt it was here either."  
"That's bad news. Okay, I'll go to that restaurant and check for things there and you… Whoa!"  
Dean staggered backwards, bumping into his brother. They had just passed a small alley. There were a few other people around and it was sheer coincidence that Dean had looked that way that moment. A moment earlier or later and he, like all the others that had passed by the alley before, would have missed what lay there, covered under soggy cardboard and wooden planks.

"The picture we're getting here's nasty." Dean leaned back on the motel bed, fiddling with his phone. "Teeth in food, blood in the shower, and women gutted like fish in alleys."  
"Not really anything we've seen."  
Sam shook his head, scrolling through the search results that had just come up. There was nothing comparable. There were many creatures hungry for human flesh, blood and guts, but none of them really ever went to collect the blood to pour it down some poor folks' waterpipes, or put the teeth into a meatgrinder.  
"Think we found something new?"  
"That or some other bastard is having too much time on his claws."  
"Who're you calling?"  
Dean looked up, appearing a little miffed and a little alarmed.  
"Tried getting Kevin on the line, see if there's anything like that in the Men Of Letters' books."  
"But? Is he not picking up?"  
Shaking his head, Dean dialed another number. The next moment Sam's own phone rang.  
"Are you calling me?" Sam raised a brow.  
"Yeah. Just checking. When I try any number for Kevin, I just sit there and stare at my phone, doing nothing," Dean rolled his shoulders "I don't like that."  
"Well, Victor told us not to call the bunker for a while…"  
"What?" Dean drew a face as if Sam had just announced that he'd resurrect the Archangels to start a cheese-themed wedding planner business in Denmark with them.  
"What?"  
"Victor who?"  
"What?"  
"You just said Victor said -"  
"Who is Victor?"  
"That's what I'm asking you."  
They sat in silence for a while, just staring awkwardly at each over. Then, almost simultaneously they shook like under a cold shower.  
"Let's get back to the blood and teeth," Dean said, putting the phone away and looking close to just checking his mental health by doing one of those magazin psych-tests. Sam didn't look much better. At least till he found what he'd been looking for. Or better yet, didn't.  
"Nothing," he sighed and leaned back, obviously frustrated. "At least nothing violent. A number of former house owners haunting their old homes, but they all seem pretty domestic. One report's on a ghost washing the dishes."  
"That's handy. Certain it wasn't after a nice meal of human intestines?"  
"Nope. No vengeful spirits, no ghouls, no nothing that would explain what we have here," with another sigh Sam closed his laptop and scratched his head. "What if…", he then started, drawing Dean's attention, "What if we're not dealing with one thing here, but two, or three?"  
"Think that's the case?"  
"No… no, not really. If it was there'd be stuff drawing them all here and there'd be a lot more blood."  
"Yeah. And what now?"  
Sam's response was a shrug, "Beats me. Guess we'll wait till they find out who that woman you found was and then go from there."  
"Good," Dean leaned back against the head of the bed and crossed his arms. "In the meantime we can get back to that other question: Who is Victor?"  
"What?"  
"Look, Sam, you said 'Victor told us not to call the bunker for a while'. That's a damned random thing to say."  
"I didn't say that."  
"You very well did."  
"Yeah", Sam huffed and wrinkled his nose, "Just like you said 'Glove compartment' the other night."  
"I did not say that."  
"You did and then we found a letter you wrote."  
"I don't like this, Sammy. What is this? Paycheck?"  
"We should just eat something", Sam resigned, "And then get some sleep."

Meanwhile, entirely elsewhere.

Two people were sitting together. One was the angel Hael. The other was a young man, remotely handsome, with dark skin and short black hair.  
"I suppose it makes sense," Hael said, clutching at a cup of tea. The past days had been stressful. She felt as if… the best comparison that came to mind was a wrong but working part being replaced with a proper one in her head. She was certain she had run into Castiel. But the encounter felt more as if she had … dreamed it. But she had met this man, another angel for all she knew, who had told her to calm down and had then invited her to tea. They had had a long talk about things angelic, and the state of everything in general, and were only now coming to a conclusion.  
The man smiled.  
"As I said, it's hard to buy that those that have to ask for a host can't properly maintain them, while every demon can possess who- and whatever they delight."  
Hael nodded again, sipping her tea. The other had told and shown her how to keep her vessel healthy, and explained to her that it's never their inability to hold the power, but the angel's sins that burn through them. Fall victim to the ways of hell and the body suffers. The stronger the sin, even if you aren't aware of committing it, the stronger it burns.  
And he had been right.  
"And what shall I do now?", Hael asked, placing the empty cup on the table.  
The other shrugged, "Go help people. Have some innocent fun. maybe even kick some demons back to Hell," he smiled again. "But you should keep away from Castiel and the Winchesters. For your sake and for theirs. Hold no grudge."  
Hael nodded. Ever since meeting this man, she assumed he must have been very high-ranking, even if she still had no idea who he was, she felt as if everything she knew was wrong.  
"Now,", the man said, his eyes flashing dark blue for a moment, "What do you say. Shall we go to the Grand Canyon?"

"Agents Blackpoole and Sterling", Dean introduced himself and Sam again, this time to the local coroner. "Could we get a look at the body found by the parking lot yesterday?"  
The doctor, a small woman with black curly hair tied up in a bun, looked at them and their IDs for a moment, before giving an apologising sigh.  
"You were there when they found her, weren't you? If you didn't get a look at her then I fear I have to disappoint you", she said. When the reaction to this was a confused look she continued, "This… will sound like I'm crazy, but she vanished."  
"Vanished?", Dean echoed, with the additional question mark.  
"When we came into here this morning, the whole place smelled as if someone had burned something. We thought the worst, but then found everything was alright. Till we located the source of the smell."  
"Our Jane Doe, correct?", asked Sam.  
"Yes."  
"And in her place you found what?"  
"Nothing but burned bits of paper. Same about her belongings."  
Sam and Dean exchanged meaningful looks, before Dean asked for a copy of the report.

"Are you seeing a pattern here, Sammy, because I sure don't", Dean muttered once they were back outside, heading back for the motel. Sam was reading over the autopsy report, his brows furrowed. At first, he didn't hear his brother.  
"Sam?"  
"Huh? What?"  
"Does this make any sense to you? All that stuff turning into nothing but burned paper? The thing on the road, the blood in the shower, now a whole corpse…"  
"And the teeth. Was in the paper this morning. 'Evidence vanished from Sheriff's office'."  
"There you have it. What kind of thing does that?"  
Sam stopped and looked at his brother, "Don't know… but…"  
"But?"  
Sam's eyes were fixed on the report, even as they got back in the car. Something about it sounded extremely familiar to him. He just couldn't put his finger on it. All it did was giving him a headache.  
"So what about our Jane Doe?"  
Sam made a short humming noise and summarised the report:  
"She had been punched or held down with force. Five teeth missing, slight laceration of the tongue, various bruises in the face. Her throat has been cut, large vessels on both sides severed," he made a fitting gesture with one hand. "Then whatever killed her slashed her stomach open." He flipped through the papers again, "But no organs missing, no bite marks, no..."  
With a huff Dean cut his brother off.  
"So again, what are we dealing with here? We have teeth in the burgers, blood in the shower, some ghost lady in the middle of the street and a vanishing mutilated corpse in an alley. And all of them go -poof- and become a pile of ash and bits of paper."  
"Your guess is as good as mine?. But this report…"  
"What about it?", Dean responded, driving off, back to the motel.  
"I don't know. I think I saw it somewhere already."  
"Are you telling me you're having a Déjà View?"  
"Vu. And no, not like that. More like I read this in a book somewhere else once, but I can't remember where or what it was about."

Once again, entirely elsewhere, but not as far away elsewhere as before

There was a stack of books on late victorian England. Right next to a stack of tissues and a cup of still hot tea.  
"No, I'm fine", a young, rather male, and very ill-sounding voice said, before its owner sniffed first and then blew his nose. "Still got some. … What? No, that idea was great," another sniff, "Talk to you later, meds kicking in."  
And he hung up, frowned, sneezed and crawled under the blanket again.

Further away elsewhere again

"Well, if you say so…", the man, a farmer and actually an angel, took off his cap and scratched his head, sighing thoughtfully as the new information proceeded through his mind.  
This man -young, remotely handsome, with dark skin and short hair- had shown up about an hour ago and had talked to him about Castiel and the Winchesters. He appeared to be an angel, as well, a high-ranking one and one that had apparently done a lot of thinking.  
"The Winchesters aren't the enemy," the man with the oddly decorated crutch said, smiling. "If you want to get back to Heaven, I can only give you the advice I gave you."  
"So I stay out of their way, and if that ain't possible…"  
"Be kind. Talk. Negotiate. Be honest. You're an angel, Ris. As such your wrath, if you feel it should be righteous, not the kind found in the Pit. You have no reason to hold a grudge against Castiel or the Winchesters. No one has. And now, farewell."  
"Huh… Yeah… Farewell."  
And the odd man left.

"Hah!", Sam smiled triumphantly at his laptop.  
"Got something?"  
Dean shuffled around the table to his brother's side looking at what that one had found. Open on Sam's monitor was a page of some small model agency.  
"Weren't you looking for the autopsy report?" Dean asked, grinning.  
"Yes, but I couldn't find anything. Then I did a search on the victim from the other motel, and look at this. She's a model. Just like...", he switched to a different tab, "Miss Jennifer Lake."  
"The other blood shower victim."  
"Yes. And get this", another tab, this time a short article, "The motel wasn't the only place that stuff happened. There's been another victim of a bloody bath here in South Hadley. Linda Bayfield, 67."  
"_67_?", Dean squinted at the monitor in disbelief, "If she's 67 I want to get the name of her anti-aging lotion."  
"Dean, please," Sam sighed, "But you might laugh: I wondered about that too. And she's been a small town beauty queen in the 60's. Says she'd been taking a bath and closed her eyes for a moment and when she opened them again the water had turned to blood. She suffered a heart attack and is now at the hospital, after her grandson Michael found her. He confirms the story about the bath."  
"So two models and an ex-beauty queen. What does that make?"  
"A connection. At least."  
"We're dealing with a monster that's targeting pretty women?"  
"Yes, and I hope it sticks to just turning showers and baths into blood before vanishing and leaving behind burned paper."  
Dean raised a brow.  
"C'mon, out with it."  
Sam sat up straight and cleared his throat.  
"I don't know how the paper or the teeth fit into this, but have you ever heard of Elizabeth Báthory?"  
Grimacing thoughtfully for a moment, Dean smacked his lips.  
"Rings a faint bell," he said, "Something with mass murder, wasn't it?"  
"That's not even half of it," Sam opened yet another tab, "She was a noble women in Hungary, in the late 16th century. She's said to have become a torturer and murderer before she was 14 and murdered 650 women in her time. Worse yet, she tortured and killed children for the sheer 'pleasure' of it."  
"Whoa… Hello Grandma Alastair", Dean drew a face of disgust.  
"My thoughts exactly," Sam turned his attention back to the screen, "Due to her position she was tried but never punished for what she did, no matter how many people wanted her to pay. And now for the part she became most infamous for: It's claimed that she had a special liking for killing young women to bathe in their blood to stay young and beautiful."  
"And they say some celebs overdo that plastic surgery stuff. So we're dealing with what? Vampire?"  
"Ghost, I'd say. Just one problem."  
Dean made a 'I-knew-there's-a-problem'-face.  
"Which?"  
"The ghost has nothing to cling to here. The Báthorys are buried in Hungary, and there are no exhibits on her here or anything at the moment."  
"Souvenirs from a trip to Europe, 'cause I'm sure as Hell not flying to Hungary."  
Sam eyed his brother, and closed the laptop.  
"Only one way to find out."

"I don't know," a neighbour informed Sam and Dean after they had found the old lady's house empty, and had asked next door if anyone knew if Mrs Bayfield had been abroad or if she knew where her grandson was. "Haven't been in town myself. Has this got anything to do with the bloodthing? This isn't some exotic disease, is it?"  
"We are trying to exclude that possibility," said Dean, and the woman sighed thoughtfully, scratching her arm nervously. "It's very, very unlikely however."  
"I hope so. I have two small children, you know. Well, if anyone knows for certain if Linda's been on a holiday it would be Michael, but I don't know if he's at school right now or if he's got the day off to be at the hospital with her."

"Let's split up," Dean said once they had gotten a description of Michael, and had driven off again, "You take the hospital, I take the school, we find what's causing this, salt and burn it and are back at the bunker in time for tomorrow's late news."  
Sam agreed. A little half-heartedly however, as some things still didn't make sense.  
And not all of them concerned the case.

"Can't. Dad's going for steak tonight", the first girl in the group said as they walked away from the school.  
"With his new girlfriend?", asked the second one.  
"Of course," the first one, whose name was Joselyn, frowned. Her parents had been through an unhappy divorce earlier the year and were right now still engaged in heavy marital war. "Do you think he'll cut mom a break and do that when it's not her shift? She'll be calling in sick."  
The second girl, Allison, and the boy with them, Julian, rolled their eyes.  
"And what now? That paper's due next week," Allison asked. "We can't really do stuff with anyone around."  
"Know what? I'll ask Dad if he can't cancel that so mom can work. If I tell him it's for that es-…"  
At this point Joselyn stopped mid-sentence and looked across the highschool's parking lot. "What's Michael doing talking to the FBI?"  
"FBI?", asked Julian, hands now burrowed in his pockets.  
"See that huge guy he's talking to? He was at Toby Lake's house the other day."  
"Why?", said Allison.  
Joselyn shrugged. "Bet you it has something to do with what happened to Toby's sister."  
"Well, then that guy is asking Mike 'bout his grandmother," Allison shuddered.  
Indeed that guy, no one else but Sam, was.  
"What kind of 'weird things'?"  
Michael seemed a little unwell at having brought that topic up.  
"You see," he admitted, "My grandparents have all this weird stuff in their basement. They're not crazy, or anything, but there's this stuff drawn on the floor and walls, and symbols and books. Things like that."  
Sam smacked his lips in surprise, having an idea what the boy meant, and took a note.  
"Can you remember the symbols?"  
"What's that got to do with anything?"  
"Anything could help."  
The boy frowned and doodled something in Sam's notebook.  
"Or something like that," he said when he handed it back.  
"So, when you were last in the basement, was anything different?"  
Michael shook his head.  
"No," he said. "Well, we took a book or two from there. Old history books. For school."  
Putting the notebook away, Sam gave Michael a long look.  
"That'd be all then" he finally said, "If there are any more questions I'll come back to you."  
Michael nodded and walked off.  
Sam sighed and reached for his phone.

Meanwhile, over at the hospital, Dean was sitting down at the bed of Mrs Bayfield, telling her he'd like to ask her a few questions about what brought her here.  
"She's just going on and on about the blood", the nurse said. Dean noticed the glare Mrs Bayfield casted at the young man at that.  
Though, in fact, Mrs Bayfield did. A bit of babbling, a bit of getting distracted. In short, she was everything but helpful.  
Dean frowned and looked away as the nurse left them for a moment, muttering 'doddery old woman' under his breath, getting annoyed.  
Once the nurse was gone, however, Mrs Bayfield suddenly sat up straighter, took a deep breath and quirked a brow at Dean.  
"I'm as much a doddery old woman as you're an FBI agent."  
Dean blinked a little taken aback for a moment, opened his mouth and closed it again, looking like a fish in the process, before reaching for his gun.  
"Oh blimey", Mrs Bayfield continued and rolled her eyes. "Do you think I'm a demon? Monster? Ghost?" she asked, a little annoyed.  
"Well, I don't know what you are, but…"  
"Am a hunter, lad. Well, been till my hubby and I grew too old for our taste."  
"A hunter that grew 'too old'?" Dean said in a voice that wasn't buying it for a single second.  
"Everyone their own, lad. We never went for the big ones. Biggest thing we had was a duppy. In '83, down in Florida. We went back here and finally settled down for good."  
"Wait, wait, wait," Dean shook his head, a little baffled. "You're not telling me you're the wife of…"  
"Trevor Bayfield. I am. So, which one are you? Sam or Dean? You can only be a Winchester."  
"Dean."  
"Then I guess you know 'bout that case from Bobby -rest in peace, you old bother-, right?"  
Dean took a deep breath, nodding, running a little out of steam now.  
"As for that literal bloodbath", Mrs Bayfield then said, making Dean look up again, "You can scratch ghosts and demons off the list. There are traps and seals all over the house, with salt and iron set into the walls. But you're free to have a look at my house. There's a set of iron cats on the porch, the key's under the middle one."  
It was that moment the nurse came back. Mrs Bayfield and Dean exchanged a few harmless phrases, before Dean left, fumbling for his mobile on the way out.  
He looked at it a little surprised as it rang the moment he was about to call his brother.  
"Sam, you're not going to believe this."  
-I was about to say the same-  
"Okay, you first."  
-There's a devil's trap in the Bayfield's house-  
"Of course, they're hunters," Dean announced, nonchalantly. What followed was the sound of Sam nearly dropping his phone.  
-_What_?-  
"Linda and Trevor Bayfield. I knew the name sounded familiar."  
-No you didn't.-  
"Did too."  
There was a frown.  
-So what now?-  
"Meet you at the motel. We'll have a look at that stuff tonight."

It wasn't much later that Sam was pacing up and down in their motel room. He had arrived first and was preparing some things for the night, looking up other explanations for what had happened. He had made some calls, finding that Mr and Mrs Bayfield had indeed been hunters, and information which only brought up the major question of what had happened in Mrs Bayfield's bathroom then. The theory about Lady Bathory had been so sound. Everything had made sense. Take a possible vampiric hungarian noble from the 17th century, have her fake her death, move elsewhere, same M.O. as before, till moving to america centuries later, kill young women and dispose of them in a meatgrinder, because modern day authorities, i.e. hunters, would not go as easy on you as folks centuries back. It had made sense. So much sense. Except for the bits with the paper. Sam still had no idea what that was about. But right now, his attention was on something else entirely.  
"The management won't like you trampling a trench into their floor," was Dean's statement as he entered the room, seeing his brother like this. His grin faded when he saw the bit of smeared blood by Sam's ear, "Sam, what..."  
"I'm fine. Don't worry." Sam was a bit of a mess, to say the least.  
"Dude, you've been bleeding out of your ear, that's everything but fine."  
"I know. I know. Okay, I'm confused and a little worried, but I'm fine. I can stand and walk, I can hear just fine, I'm not dizzy or anything." He sat down at the table anyway. "Okay, maybe a little dizzy."  
"What happened?" Dean sat down opposite of his brother, hands on the table and leaning over it for a moment.  
"I tried to call Kevin", Sam said, running a hand through his hair, "Called other people about the Bayfields first and then wanted to see if he could find anything about what we're dealing with here."  
"Didn't you tell me Victor said no to that, just yesterday?"  
"No I didn't."  
"And I didn't point you to the glove compartment."  
Sam rolled his eyes and frowned.  
"Okay now, what happened then?", asked Dean, his voice calmer again.  
"I called, it rang, but then… there was this sound," he sighed, "as if everyone in the world screamed at me at once. I felt like my head was exploding."  
Dean grimaced. "But you're alright?"  
"Yeah. Still a little dizzy, but I'm fine." Then Sam took a deep breath. Dean didn't miss the signs.  
"That's not all, is it?", he asked and Sam nodded.  
"Once my head started spinning, I wanted to gear up. I got through my bag and found this."  
He placed a crumpled piece of paper on the table. Written on it were several lines of numbers, all crossed out, and a little skull drawn in the corner at the bottom, with a 'No!' next to it.  
"That's your handwriting," Dean stated after looking over the paper. "What's with those numbers?"  
"No idea. They're too long for coordinates or phone numbers. And I don't remember writing that."  
Dean frowned and threw the paper onto the table, "First my letter to us, now this. What's going on Sam?"  
"I wish I knew. At least your letter made some sort of sense."  
"You call 'Things got rebooted' and 'Stab E. in the face' 'making sense'?"  
"More than that," Sam waved a hand at the crumpled note, "for certain."  
Dean made a face. "Well then," he said, reclining in the chair. "Let's concentrate on what we have a clue about. What did you find?"  
"Michael said he had friends over a few weeks back, a bit before the first time teeth wound up in the town's meat. He said he wanted to get some books from his grandmother's basement."  
"They've been dabbling in the occult?"  
"I doubt that. Michael said they were for papers for school. Plain old history books."  
"Aha?"  
Sam shrugged. "I don't think he's lying. He seemed clueless about what else they found in the basement."  
"The devil's trap, right?"  
"And apparently some other symbols and sigils. If you'd ask me, I'd say that they accidentally broke a line…"  
"...And allowed a hungarian madwoman with her own ideas about anti-aging products into the house."  
"And city."  
"So, we go there, find what's broken, and fix it."  
"Exactly."  
"Good. Mrs Bayfield told me where she keeps a key."  
"Oh. Alright then. Michael should be leaving soon."  
"Come again?"  
"He said he'll be heading down to the airport in Windsor Locks. Picking up his parents in the morning."  
Dean grinned. "Ain't it nice when things are simple for a change?"  
He rose and went to get his bag. Sam looked after him, his face falling, lips pressed together. No, it wasn't simple. Not the slightest. He grabbed the crumpled note from the table and put it into his pocket, fingers brushing against something that had been wrapped in the paper. He couldn't tell his brother about it. Not yet at least.

"Your mom is amazing," Julian said as they settled down at Joselyn's house. Her mother had left for work not too long ago, despite Joselyn having failed to convince her father to go somewhere else for dinner with his new girlfriend.  
Joselyn huffed. "I'd rather say Dad's an ass. Mom's just trying to get through life with me." She put down a bowl and a knife on the table, alongside some plastic containers and an old, leatherbound book. "I think we got everything."  
"We should make it stronger this time," said Allison.  
"Why?", asked Joselyn.  
Allison looked away, making a face.  
"I haven't done much with that paper yet. I mean, I saw how well this worked and…" she sighed, "I thought I'd have so much more time now."  
Joselyn rolled her eyes, and Julian spoke before she could say anything.  
"You're not the only one. Chris just started on his."  
"Well, he's ill, he'll get more time to finish anyway," said Allison. "But we won't. So, c'mon, let's do this."  
They frowned and nodded in unison. Who would have thought that writing a paper on famous murderers would be so tedious. 'Twas good that they found a way to make things a little easier.

"...cat in the middle…", Dean gleamed and picked up the key. Night hadn't fallen yet, but it was getting dark, and Michael had left a good quarter of an hour ago. The best time to have a look at Mrs Bayfield's house.  
A quick look around and Sam and Dean slipped through the open door.  
"Mhn, sigil wallpaper," Dean commented as he spotted it in the beam of his flashlight. "Handy."  
In fact, the entire house appeared to be neatly built to ward of all kinds of occult entities. Sigils and seals in the wallpaper and carpet, carved into the doorframes and handrails on the stairs.  
"This is odd," came Sam's comment as he headed for the basement.  
"They were hunters," Dean countered, "They knew what they were dealing with."  
"That's what I meant, Dean. All those traps and wards and stuff, how would anything we know get from the basement to the bathroom, wherever that is?"  
Dean turned and shone his flashlight into Sam's face, making him raise his hand to shield his eyes. "True." His brows furrowed and his stance changed. "Let's split up then. I'm not in the mood for getting looked up in the basement by Starships 2.0. One of us should stay out of here."  
He pointed his thumb over his shoulder, signaling Sam to head back up the stairs.  
The basement itself was pretty unspectacular.  
Lots of shelves, old furniture, a few tools here and there. One shelf held a grand number of old books, making it the only thing down here that looked a little out of place. Next to what was drawn onto the walls. Dean stepped closer, squinting at the lines of all the symbols around him. Nothing he hadn't seen before. And no line broken as far as he could tell. He moved carefully around the area, examining each ward he could spot, wall, ceiling and floor alike.  
Meanwhile, Sam was looking for the bathroom, equally carefully looking at the hidden symbols on his way there. Everything seemed fine. There appeared to be no way anything could have come in here. The same in the bathroom. He looked at the mirror, considering the possibilities.

"What're you thinking about?", Joselyn asked, as she noticed Allison seemed distracted, fiddling with the edge of a writing pad in her lap.  
Allison looked at her, blinking for a moment. "Oh, not much. Just that FBI agent that's been talking to Mike."

Sam saw the flickering reflection just in time to move to the side as an axe burrowed into the wooden cabinet under the mirror. He spun around, looking at what appeared to be a madwoman with an axe.  
Dressed in an antique dress.  
With… letters moving in her eyes and under her skin.

A moment passed before the thing screeched and lunged at Sam, the latter managing to dodge away at the very last second. The apparition turned, the axe in the cabinet vanished, appearing in its hand again. Sam raised his gun as the thing ran towards him again, firing once, hitting, but without much of an effect. The ghostly form split where it was hit for a second, looking like ink dropped into a glass of water. Behind it, a vase burst apart. Again the thing launched itself forward, axe raised. Sam let himself fall to the ground, the apparition stumbling over him. Literally stumbling. It staggered, dropping the axe in the process, and gave a screech as it found its balance again. Sam blinked. The same moment the bathroom door was pushed open.  
"Bullets don't work" getting back onto his feet himself Sam shouted to his brother, who, receiving that information, did the only logical thing, grabbed at the next best item and swung it at the thing. Who, for a moment, stared at him in surprise, before bursting into a small shower of burning paper.  
The brothers watched the paper fall and burn on the tiles.  
"Did I just", Dean started, stubbornly not looking at the makeshift weapon in his hand, "Kill a ghost with a toilet brush?"  
Sam smacked his lips and nodded.  
"Well…", said Dean, putting the item away, still stubbornly not looking, "That's a new one," he cleared his throat, wiped his hands on his pants, looking his brother over. "You're alright?"  
"Yeah." That said, Sam kneeled back down, picking up a bit of the paper.  
"Wasn't that Lizzie Borden?", Dean asked, rather angry and a little confused, before turning his attention to the cabinet. "I thought that was a possession thing."  
Sam was leafing through the papers carefully, while Dean ran a finger over the crack in the cabinet, whistling through his teeth at the size of it.  
"This is bad," he said, shaking his head. The corpse they had found the other day might have vanished, which probably meant it was part of whatever it was that was going on, but if a mark such as this remained, it was easy to imagine that people were in danger should this thing not get stopped.  
"This is greek," Sam suddenly announced, drawing Dean's attention away from the gash in the cabinet.  
"What?"  
"Greek. Ancient greek on top of that," Sam's eyes widened as an idea hit him.  
"Sam?"  
"Yes?"  
"You look like you just discovered the meaning of life. Mind sharing it?"  
Sam closed his mouth and swallowed, before clearing his throat. "I think I know what we're dealing with."  
"Well, if that was Lizzie Borden and that Bathory woman is in the mix too, we…"  
"It's not demons, Dean."  
"Then what is it?"

Not too far away, over at one of the town's restaurants, a young woman was standing alone in the bathroom, washing her hands. She was currently contemplating leaving the restaurant early, as she couldn't stand her new boyfriend constantly making his ex-wife's life hell. She sighted and reached for a paper towel.

At the same moment, Joselyn, notepad in front of her, gnawing on a pen, complained about her father's new girlfriend.

The woman in the bathroom, her name was Christine, caught a glimpse of the odd reflection in the mirror just in time. It was a man with a moustache, half bald, dressed in clothes from the turn of the previous century, an odd mark around his neck and a hatchet in his hand. The woman's attention was on the weapon immediately, but she did notice the odd figures running under the man's skin. She gasped as the man attacked her, dodging away and kicking her heel into his side. The figure grunted and turned towards her again, but suddenly it seemed distracted. It vanished. Christine gasped, eyes narrowed, waiting for another attack.

"Know what's the worst thing is?", Joselyn frowned, taking a long gulp from a cup next to her, "She's not that bad, actually. It's all dad's fault."

There was an uproar from outside the lady's room. Crashing of glass and plates and chairs and several loud voices and screams. Christine ran out of the bathroom, gasping at the sign before her. The main hall of the restaurant was a mess and in the middle of it was the strange man from before, viciously attacking her boyfriend, while other guests looked on in terror, some probably thinking this was some cruel prank. It wasn't until his ex-wife suddenly stormed onto the scene, swinging an umbrella like a baseball bat and bringing it down on the odd man's head with full force. Something odd, odder and weirder and only a little less unsettling than the scene before, happened: The odd man vanished, leaving behind nothing but a small pile of ash and bits of burning paper.  
It took a moment, till someone in the crowd yelled for someone to call an ambulance.

The phone rang. Joselyn rose, rubbing her head as she had suddenly gotten a mild headache, and picked up the receiver. Allison and Julian looked at her, watching her face losing all colour all of a sudden.  
Shaking, she hung up and turned towards her friends, words stuck in her throat.  
"What's wrong?", Julian asked.  
"It's… it's dad…", Joselyn found her voice, although it was weak, "Someone… someone tried to kill him at the restaurant," she suddenly turned, grabbing her jacket, "I need to go to the hospital…"  
Completely forgetting all other things her friends rose from their work, notepads, pens and a bowl of a glimmering liquid getting left behind as they raced out of the house.  
As the door fell shut behind them, a young woman appeared on the foot of the stairs. She was small, with dark olive skin, an updo, well dressed, clutching a clipboard and currently biting her lower lip as if she was really, really worried.

"I'm fine, Sammy. Forget the hopsital," Dean grunted, holding his ear and resting his head against the dashboard while Sam raced the Impala through the streets.  
Sam had explained what he thought they were dealing with here. Which brought up a whole new problem. They had no idea how to deal with things now. They had similar opponents in the past, but that wasn't saying much. Everything remotely from the same page of the big book of supernatural buttheads was a bitch to take care of. Then Dean had tried calling Kevin for assistance -as the local libraries were already closed- despite him and Sam agreeing that it might be a bad idea after what had happened to Sam earlier the day. They were wrong about this call having the same effect as it had on Sam. It was worse.  
Now Dean was pressing a towel against the side of his head. Oddly enough, despite the amount of blood, he was otherwise fine, just really dizzy, with only a bit of bad hearing. He hadn't noticed that he had collapsed and was out for several minutes after the attempted call.  
"You were out for a whole five minutes, Dean," Sam retorted, letting the motor roar, "We get you to the hospital, see what's going on, and then… whoa!" An ambulance nearly cut them off, followed by a small, dark green car.  
They reached the hospital a few moments after the ambulance, just in time to spot an odd, olive-skinned woman suddenly appeared and disappearing just as fast, looking after the man that was hurried into the ER.  
Now they had two reasons to be here.

Once again, entirely elsewhere.  
"I found it curious to have not run into any angels yet," Castiel said, after swallowing a great bit of steak and baked potato. Opposite of him, and paying for the dinner, sat the angel Hael, watching him with a bit of amazement.  
"So, tell me," Cas continued, "This other angel you mentioned."  
Hael shrugged. "I don't know who he was. But as I said, he was very powerful."  
"And he showed you how to heal your vessel?"  
Hael nodded. "May I?" She reached over, snatching a slice of cucumber from the salad next to Castiel's plate, nibbling lazily on it. "He was… just plain odd. No one I ever saw in Heaven. But he said I musn't harm you should I run into you. Or the Winchesters."  
Castiel looked up from his plate again, burping softly, earning a bewildered look from Hael. Being human was really something that would take time getting used too.  
"Can I ask you something?" Hael then said, leaning back in her seat. "What happened?"  
Now Castiel put the cutlery down.  
"Metatron lied to me about his plans for Heaven and Earth and Hell. He said he was going to fix everything, when in fact he intended to break it all," he sighed, "All out of revenge for…" Castiel stopped, suddenly looking confused to his very essence.  
"Hael, tell me something, can you actually remember the Metatron ever leaving Heaven?"

Joselyn was devastated. Her mother had just told her what had happened, and she didn't know what to make of that. There was the fact that her dad had been attacked and was currently fighting for his life, but the story as a whole didn't make any sense.  
"But it's crazy!", Joselyn exclaimed as she, Allison and Julian snuck off to a quiet little corner to talk. "People don't just get up and disappear."  
Julian rolled her eyes. "Jo, we're writing homework using some greek voodoo. Disappearing crazies are totally below that on the 'weird' scale."  
Joselyn frowned, bit her lips. The same moment Allison grimaced in desperation as he remembered something.  
"Shit! We forgot the stuff. Your mom'll going crazy if she sees that."  
The other two made a similar face, a general illustration of the word 'fuck'. Allison was about to say something when somewhere nearby someone shouted, and the three of them scrambled to get away from possible trouble and back to Joselyn's home before her mom did.

The woman with the clipboard hadn't noticed Sam and Dean. She was too busy keeping an eye, not on the man that had been raced here, but on his teenage daughter and her friends. She adjusted her cardigan, and followed them silently to an empty corridor in the building. She sighted, raised her hand… and almost screamed as someone much taller than she was grabbed her wrist.  
"Hey! Leave'em alone," Sam grunted, holding her arm.  
A doctor had given Dean a quick check-up, declared there to be no greater injuries and that he couldn't explain the blood. Then he had looked at Dean and Sam as if the two were pulling his leg. While he gave Dean a more thorough check-up (the blood had to come from somewhere, after all), Sam went to pay Mrs Bayfield a visit, asking her about the matter at hand, trying to find the woman they had spotted at the entrance. Only to run into her on an empty corridor, spying on a group of teenagers.  
Much to his surprise, the woman seemed mortally frightened of him.  
True, he had seen monsters actually being scared of him and Dean, they had a reputation after all. But not like this.  
"My end you will become, will you not?" the woman finally spoke, holding up the clipboard like a shield, peeking over it, "As you are a Winchester and in my responsibility, albeit not in my intention, it lies that a man is at the verge of death."  
Sam was a little taken aback by the prose.  
"You nearly killed a man and now you are after those teenagers."  
"I did not harm the elder. It is not to my liking. And those did not adhere the rules."  
"So you're going to punish them?!"  
"No… no. Gracious gods, I will not," the woman looked at Sam, shaking her head. "Just remove the desire to further use what they should not have used at all." She then looked around the corner, making a devastated sound as she found the teenagers had left, probably after being alerted by Sam's words.  
"I must leave and find them."  
And she was gone.

It would have been much of a surprise if Dean would have actually listened to the doctor's order to lie down for a bit after the check-up was through. At the first possibility to head out, he had headed out, and up the stairs, to meet his brother at Mrs Bayfield's room. Not that Sam had been there. In fact, Dean ran into him just in front of the room.  
"I lost her," Sam admitted, a little out of breath.  
"What?" Dean grunted, pulling his brother around a corner to get out of plain sight.  
"I saw her stalking some teenagers, but she vanished."  
"Dammit, Sam!"  
"What was I supposed to do? I told you bullets do nothing. And this is a hospital."  
"Find the teenagers, maybe?"  
"And then what?"  
Dean smacked his lips and, after a quick glance around, slipped into Mrs Bayfield's room.  
"You're back pretty fast," she greeted Dean, sitting up in her bed, putting what she'd been reading to the side. Then she eyed Sam. "And that must be Sam. Nice to meet you."  
Sam smiled back, a little awkward for a moment, while Dean closed the door behind him.  
"We don't have much time, ma'am," he said.  
"What do you know about muses?", Sam added.  
Mrs Bayfield raised a brow. "Muses? Is that what's going on here?"  
"We think so," Sam answered, "One seems to be behind the things happening lately. And she's currently after some teenagers."  
"Last time I met one they were anything but a threat," said Mrs Bayfield.  
Sam and Dean looked at each other.  
"You met one?", asked Dean, a little baffled.  
"Two, actually. Years and years back. Polyhymnia and Euterpe. Nice girls. Were constantly singing while speaking. 'twas a bit of a musical that case, I tell you. Can't blame them, though," Mrs Bayfield stretched, "We ran into them after two rivaling composers tried to best each other with their aid, but then went and summoned some demons when things didn't go fast enough. It was a mess."  
"Did you," Sam started, approaching the bed and sitting down on a chair next to it, "know how they summoned the muses?"  
"It was in another hunter's old diary one of them found, from what we know," Mrs Bayfield narrowed her eyes and knitted her brows, before frowning aloud. "Blimey!"  
"What?", came the response in unison.  
"You probably saw my basement, right? All the books?"  
Dean nodded.  
"When Trevor and I decided to settle down", Mrs Bayfield continued, hastly "We gave most of our books away. Those no one wanted or need we put in the basement with all the other old books," she rolled her eyes, "Thought they'd be safe. One of them was exactly that book. Now, those teenagers you mentioned. Two girls, two boys by chance? One of the girls with pink strands?"  
"I only saw three," Sam said, "but yes, that fits one of them."  
"That's some of Michael's friends. That girl is Joselyn. They're having to write something for school. I guess Mike took the book from the basement not knowing what he had there."  
Again Sam and Dean glanced at each other, alarmed.  
"That was the girl whose father was attacked," Dean said, also alarming Mrs Bayfield in the progress.  
"What?"  
"When we came here that girl's father was being raced into the ER."  
"That's not good."  
"That's not all," exchanging glances with Dean, Sam started telling Mrs Bayfield what happened at her home and what they heard here at the hospital, making Mrs Bayfield shake her head rather confused.  
"If a muse is the cause for that, something's seriously amiss," she said. "Told you they aren't that vicious."  
"But something is, and that thing is at least a key element."  
Looking at Dean, Mrs Bayfield shook her head.  
"You can't kill a muse. You'd destroy what she embodies. That'd be like killing Time, or Fate, or Death. And from what I know you two met that old bother. But I can give you the kids' address, maybe you'll find out what's going on."  
She did, and Sam and Dean were off again.

"What do you mean, gone?" Allison almost hissed.  
They had arrived at Joselyn's house a few minutes before and decided that pouring their 'greek voodoo potion' down the drain would be a waste. Only to find the bowl all three of them _knew_ they had left in the middle of the coffee table gone. Along with the book they had the spell from.  
"But that's impossible," Allison continued.  
"I know," said Joselyn. "Mom's gonna kill me. She made that bowl herself." She looked at her friends. "Did we really leave it on the table?"  
"I don't know, actually," said Julian.  
"Neither," said Allison. "I mean, when you said your dad's at the hospital, things got messy."  
"Let's look for it then. Has to be somewhere."  
And they started searching.

The Impala screeched to a halt outside Joselyn's house. The boys got out and snuck closer to the house in the dark.  
"No sound of people getting brutally slaughtered," Dean said, peeking into the window, "That's always a big plus."  
"They're still making a lot of noise."  
"They are looking for what they should never have had as they had it and what I took from them," sounded a voice behind them. Sam and Dean spun around, facing the being they were looking for. She was holding a small stone bowl and a book.  
"Might I borrow your lighter?", she asked.  
"What?" Both Winchesters had instinctively reached for their weapons (even though they still had no clue how to actually go about the general situation of this case) but stopping when the request proceeded through their ears.  
"I would like to burn this brew and end this reckless dream of dark," the woman said, "Therefore please forfeit your intentions of ending me."  
The boys lowered their hands a little baffled.  
"What is that?", asked Sam, and in response the woman handed him the book.  
"The 512th page," she said.  
Sam flipped to the page in question, reading.  
"Oh," he said, and fumbled his lighter from his pocket.  
"What?", Dean interrupted him and peeked onto the page, before he went 'Oh' as well, and let Sam hand over the lighter.  
"So, you're a muse?" Dean asked, once the substance in the bowl was burning softly in a secluded spot by the Impala. The woman nodded. "Sam here said you must be one of the writers," Dean continued. Which one are you, Clio or Cassiopeia?"  
"Calliope," Sam whispered, leaning towards his brother.  
"What?"  
"Calliope's a muse."  
Dean thought for a moment. "Cassiopeia was Momo's turtle, right?"  
Sam nodded.  
"I am Clio," the muse said.  
"Well then, Clio," said Sam as the flames died off slowly. "What exactly happened here?"  
"They searched knowledge on those that took pleasure in slaughtering their kin and found the book you hold."  
"'They' are those teenagers in there, right?"  
Clio nodded and explained. In a way that gave the brothers a little headache by the looks of it.  
"Just so we're on the same page here", Dean then said, making a face as if he was still not buying it. "Those kids in there were writing an essay. On serial killers. And they went to Mrs Bayfield's house cause looking for history books, found this instead and then went, casted that spell, which called you so you would do their homework for them?"  
Tilting her head a little Clio nodded once more.  
"I believe that was what they desired."  
"But that spell was meant to be used before sleeping, so they'd dream about that stuff and while they do an enchanted pen would write their essay. But because they didn't sleep you made that stuff appear in reality, and then they made the potion stronger and thought of Sammy, and that guy, so the serial killers appeared and attacked them."  
"That is correct," Clio said, and Dean rubbed his temples.  
"Moral of the story," he frowned, "If the package says 'Take before sleeping' take it before sleeping."  
"Wait," Sam suddenly interrupted, narrowing his eyes, "You listed four serial killers. Lizzie Borden, Elizabeth Bathory, Carl Grossman and Jack the Ripper. That means four students. But I only saw three. What did you do to the fourth?"  
"The same I intended for those three and what I shall do now."  
Automatically Sam and Dean got back into an attack stance, and Clio made a step away from them, raising her hands defensively.  
"Oh, no. No," she said. "I did not harm him. He has fallen ill and I visited him, taking the potion and the memory of its existence from him. That is all I shall do to those three."  
Then she vanished, appearing at the door of Joselyn's home across the street a moment later, ringing the bell. When the door was opened, it all happened very fast. Clio handed the bowl (now filled with popcorn) to Joselyn, who had opened and then there was a small sound, as if a violin's string was plucked, and Joselyn looked confused, and closed the door again.  
Clio skipped back over to Sam and Dean, smiling.  
"All is well now," she said. "I shall return to my realm, and ask Asclepius to aid the man this dream of dark brought close to death."  
"That's good," said Dean, hands on his hips. "We'll let you go this time. But if you'll ever cause trouble…"  
Clio chuckled.  
"I shall not do so. But should you need my aid, you now hold the means to call my sisters and me forth. And now, farewell and take good care, for I can see how great the history before you is and isn't."  
And then she was gone.  
"What the hell was that supposed to mean?", Dean grumbled.  
"I was going to ask the same thing."

Several hundred miles away, Hael looked up from the book she's been reading.  
"What's wrong?", asked Castiel. They had decided to share a hotel room, as Hael had the feeling she had to keep Castiel safe from other angels that, she felt, had not understood the lesson she had learned by now.  
"I don't know," Hael closed her eyes, concentrating. "But I think," she said, opening her eyes again and making a confused face, "there's a pirate station broadcasting on angel radio."

"Once we're home we need to get Kev and celebrate," Dean grinned, as the Impala drove down a road outside South Hadley, the starry sky above, "We don't have cases like this too often. Everyone living and stuff."  
Sam made a murmuring, but agreeing sound, flipping through the pages of the spellbook Clio had given them.  
"Anything interesting?", asked Dean.  
"If by interesting you mean confusing, then yeah, the whole book."  
"What?"  
"The spells seem alright, as far as I can tell," Sam shook his head, "But… get this: 'Be wary of those that say to be angels but bear the names of the prophets of old and the kings of older. They do not lie that they came from Heaven, but far from home are they often now."  
"What's that supposed to mean?"  
"I know," Sam closed the book and turned it around carefully. "I feel like we've got more questions than answers right now."  
"Chin up, Sammy. We get back to the bunker, and see what we find. I mean, we have an old book, a letter and a few weird numbers. Can't be that hard to explain that."  
"I don't think we'll find all answers at the bunker."  
Now Sam was worrying the hem of his sleeve.  
"What's the matter?", Dean asked, seeing his brother lean against the window like that.  
Sam sighed through his nose, not answering for a moment.  
"Fine, don't tell me," Dean shrugged, concentrating on the road again. It was then that Sam, without a word, pulled something from his pocket, holding it up.  
Dean nearly steered the Impala into the next tree.  
Once the car stopped, a little askew at the side of the road, Dean stared at the item in his brother's hand in utter disbelief. It was a very, very particular amulet.  
For several moments Dean's mouth opened and closed again, as he was obviously looking for something to say, while Sam stoically avoided his eyes.  
"Remember the note I showed you", Sam finally said, still not looking at his brother, even as Dean took the amulet, moving it between his fingers, "This was wrapped in it."  
"You're shitting me. C'mon, Sam, this is a lookalike you found somewhere."  
Now Sam did look at his brother.  
"And where?", he asked, "Dean, we haven't really been anywhere where I could've found that."  
Dean went silent, leaning onto the steering wheel.  
"What's going on with us, Sammy?", he asked, staring into the distance.  
"Wish I knew."  
"Well," Dean then grinned, slipping the amulet around his neck, "Then let's find out and kick the ass of whoever's behind it."  
The motor roared, and BTO's 'Hey You' played on the radio.


	2. Eat Your Heart Out

"There's nothing I can do for him."  
The man hearing this was slumping down on the couch in the living room. It was the third time in just three months that he was hearing this news from the family's doctor.  
He looked up at the older man.  
"Is it the same as with Maddy?", he asked, voice trembling, face pale.  
The doctor nodded.  
"I'm sorry, Andrew."  
In the room the doctor had just left a young man, maybe just a little younger than the one in the living room, laid in his bed, deadly pale and thin to the bones, breath shallow. He would not make it through the night.

At a gas station just a bit outside Erie, Pennsylvania, a bit after sunrise, Dean sat on the hood of the Impala, phone on his ear, while Sam was just coming back with some food.  
"Still the same?", Sam asked.  
"It's ringing now," Dean responded.  
Sam quirked a brow.  
"Ringing ringing?"  
"Nasty-in-the-ear-ringing," Dean clarified, putting the phone away. "That's not good. The faster we're back at the bunker, the better."  
Sam had meanwhile stowed everything away and now looked at his brother, and nodded.  
"We'll have to make a detour. They say the streets 'round Cleveland are closed."  
Dean frowned and slipped off the car.  
"Just great."  
"It's just about an hour if we go by Grove City on the 79."

Two people stood outside a hotel, looking at the windows, before nodding at each other. There was determination written on their faces. But as they were about to enter, someone put a hand on their shoulders and they spun around.  
The man, tall, dark and remotely handsome, smiled at them. It was not a kind smile.  
"Oh no, you won't," he said and grabbed both by the ear. There was a flash of light and the man nodded satisfied as the two humans, formerly being unfairly used as vessels for ill-minded angels, slumped down. He dusted off his hands, looked around, before running into the hotel's lobby, full panic mode, asking the woman behind the desk to call an ambulance for the two folks that had suddenly collapsed outside.  
A few floors above, Hael looked up from her book, as irritated by the sudden surge of energy nearby as she had been by hearing Castiel snoring a few hours ago. Well, almost as irritated.

It was now an hour later, at a small diner in Titusville.  
"Okay," Dean grunted, digging a fork into his pie "How exactly did we miss Grove City by 50 miles?"  
"You tell me, you were driving," Sam responded, watching Dean huff.  
"The signs said 99. 99, not 97. We were going the right way."  
"Can't really be, or we wouldn't be 50 miles north-east from where we wanted to go."  
Dean grunted again and munched on his dish as if it had personally offended him.  
"'Tleast the pie's good."  
Sam grinned.  
"See, that's something."  
Dean shrugged, continued eating, watching the people in the diner and on the street, while Sam flipped through the book they had gotten from their latest case.  
"E.F." Sam suddenly said, drawing at least a bit of Dean's attention, who responded with a half-hearted 'hmmph?'  
"Whoever wrote this had the initials E.F. Here."  
Sam turned the book to show his brother the flourish signature on the first page.  
"Fancy," was all Dean had to say on the matter, his gaze still on the people outside, his posture slumped and bored. That was until he suddenly shot up, eyes fixed on something outside.  
"Dude, he's not going to…"  
Before Sam could even ask what was going on, Dean had stormed out of the diner and across the street, tackling a man who was just stepping out in front of a heavy, fast approaching truck.

There aren't many things capable of making the world stop; making people around hold their breath, making time seemingly slow down. A man, early 30s, running out of a diner to tackle down some suicidal crazy, and managing, isn't one of them. It just stops the traffic.  
Sam, who had run after his brother, stopped, turned, paid for their meal, then chased after Dean; by the time he reached the two, a crowd that had formed around them, making it even harder for the traffic to get going again.  
Ignoring the shouts from bystanders, Dean helped the man up, who looked at him in disbelief, before gritting his teeth and flailing at Dean.  
"Why did you help me?!", at least the screech sounded like that. The man's face was a mixture of white and red, all under a layer of cold sweat. "I don't want this. I can't do this. Not again. Not again. Why did you do that?!"  
Dean moved and dodged out of the way of the man's hapless attacks.  
"Calm down, dude. Whoa! Fuck. Calm down!"  
That moment Sam arrived, pushing through the crowd and grabbing the man by his shoulders, just as that latter finally lost his energy and collapsed into a sobbing heap.  
"You okay?", Sam asked Dean; his brother nodded, kneeling down to look at the man.  
"Hey, man, you ok too?"  
Before the man could answer, a woman's voice called for someone named 'Andrew' from just up the road. The crowd parted, giving view to a blonde woman in her 40s, wearing an orange cardigan, a flowerprint dress and house slippers.  
She looked relieved upon seeing the man, rushing over and wrapping her arms around him, sobbing just as he did.  
"What were you thinking?" she sobbed, clutching his face, "That won't make it better." Then she turned and looked at Sam and Dean, thanking them.  
"Are you alright, ma'am?", Sam asked, and the woman nodded, "We'll be alright."  
She got back onto her feet, helping the man up in the process, and they walked off, with her holding the man upright.  
"Not a way I'd like to start my day," Dean commented, then looked at Sam, his face sobering. "Dead loved one?"  
"Dead loved one," Sam nodded.  
"And not the only one, by the sound of it."  
Again, Sam nodded. It was then, that a small black girl, about four, maybe five, dragging a woman about thirty behind her, approached the two.  
"Are you talking 'bout uncle Andrew?", the girl asked, earning a slightly confused look.  
"That man you saved. That's my uncle Andrew. He's mommy's brother."  
The woman holding the girl's hand nodded a 'hallo' to Sam and Dean, and the girl continued.  
"We saw you save him and I wanted to say thank you."  
Sam and Dean kneeled down.  
"That's our job," Dean smiled. "Saving people."  
The girl gave him big smile.  
"Can you make the thing go away and stop hurting him?", she asked, and her mother got irritated.  
"Emily!"  
The girl looked up, not taken aback, but more miffed at not being allowed to say anything.  
"What thing?", Dean asked, nonetheless.  
Emily's mother sighed heavily, answering for her daughter.  
"Emily thinks there must be a monster responsible for what's happening to our family."  
"Oh?", asked Sam, making a face that Dean recognised as his brother mentally listing the usual suspects. He couldn't blame him. He was doing the same.  
"I admit," the woman said, "If monsters actually existed I'd prefer that explanation. Better than just being so rotten unfortunate," she blushed rather ashamed and tried her best keeping her head up. "I guess that means Mark didn't make it," she tilted her head, smiling apologetically, "Look at me, bothering two complete strangers. I'm very sorry."  
"Ma'am, there's no need to be," said Sam, standing up, "We're very sorry for your loss."  
"Thank you," the woman sighed, giving a little smile. "Come, Emily. We should go to aunt Carol and uncle Andrew, I'm certain that will cheer them up a little."  
As the two walked away, Sam and Dean looked at each other.  
"What do you think?", Sam asked.  
"Guess Kevin has to do without us for a while."

Abaddon had been on Earth for a long, long time. She had seen a lot. And she had plans. Well, had had. The current one, getting resurrected by a band of demons all too eager to follow her lead, went well to the point that she got resurrected.  
Then all hell broke loose. Or heaven, going by a demon's point of view.  
She had never seen a hellhound that huge. Its snout alone had been twice her size, leathery, scaly skin stretching over a long skull that opened into a unfathomable maw with rows and rows of razor sharp teeth, fur as black as the darkest pits of hell itself seeming to bristle with electricity, two sets of burning red eyes glaring at her and the other demons as the creature suddenly burst into where they had just called Abaddon back into the living world. Gargantuan claws easily trashed the place, the hellhound ripping the demons out of their bodies and then apart.  
But it had spared Abaddon herself. It had just huffed at her and went away.  
She understood. It was a message. She wasn't certain exactly what that messages was, but at least it a clear reason to change plans. Screw the Winchesters. It was much more interesting now to find and met the one that controlled that beast.

"Ah, got them," Dean announced, looking up from the laptop. They had checked into a motel in town and while Sam was studying the diary, Dean was looking up everything that could help. Sam looked up from the book, shuffling over to the table. Dean had the webpage of a local newspaper open as well as a certain social network page.  
"Okay, the guy on the street was Andrew Willows," he summarized, "He's married to Carol Willows, two children. In the past three months they lost a brother and niece on Andrew's side, and an aunt on Carol's. And this 'Mark' must have been Carol's brother," Dean pointed. "This guy."  
"A Marine."  
"Yeah," Dean said, sober and solemn, "Just came home after the birth of his daughter."  
Sam looked at the pages.  
"Big family all together," he commented, in the same tone as his brother.  
"Doesn't mean it hurts less."  
The short, but thoughtful reaction from Sam was a simple nod. Then both of them went silent for a moment.  
"So, what d'you think?", Dean finally asked.  
"Let's see… Lieutenant Raymond Willows, 49, found near dead after he went missing on a camping trip, died two days later at the hospital. Madeline Willows, 20, died after losing control of her car. Heather Conrad, 63, heart attack," Sam shook his head and huffed. "Papers say tragic accidents."  
Dean nodded, "No one's that unlucky without a curse or being haunted."  
"You're thinking about the little girl, right?"  
Again Dean nodded, his chin resting in his hand in a thoughtful gesture.  
"Kids that age usually mean what they say with those things."  
"Unless they're us."  
"We just learned to lie earlier than others, Sammy."  
Silence fell again.  
"So, what do you think? Curse or someone sicking something on the Willows?", asked Sam, and Dean closed the laptop, getting up.  
"Let's find out."  
For a moment Sam pondered.  
"Freelance reporters?"  
"Sounds good. Little tasteless, but should work. Hannigan and Brite?"  
"I take Brite."  
"Grab your camera."

"It's embarrassing, really," the man Dean had saved before, Andrew Willows, said, as they had sat down in the garden behind the house.  
People react in a wide variety of ways to losing a loved one. Some people want to be alone, others want to talk. Even if the ones they're talking to are reporters that want to write a story about your family's misfortune. At least those two looked trustworthy. Even if trustworthy in this case was synonymous with 'untalented enough to not be able to get the story published'.  
"Your family has just lost someone, Sir," said Dean, all polite, and Mr Willows sighed.  
"Still, I shouldn't have done that. Carol and Sophie need me. But when they drove off with Mark it was just too much. Have you ever lost someone?"  
Neither Sam nor Dean answered. The man couldn't even fathom that this would not be a simple 'yes', would either have told him the truth.  
"We buried three people in the last three months alone. Papers called it 'tragic' each time," Andrew sneered and leaned back, crossing his arms. "That's not even close."  
"What would you call it?", asked Sam, taking notes. Not really. In fact, right now he was making a list of things they could be dealing with, if these deaths actually had a supernatural connection. Maybe it was just one of the Fates going on a killing spree. Again. For whatever reason.  
"Cruel. That's what I would call it."  
"Understandable," said Dean, folding his hands. "Mind telling us something about your brother-in-law? Why was he here instead of the hospital?"  
"They gave up on him at the hospital. Said there's nothing they could do anymore. He then said he wanted to die at home and go the OK," leaning forward again with a heavy sigh, Mr Willows went on, "He started to look better for a week or so, but then everything went to Hell. He's a Marine, god damn it, he shouldn't die from pneumonia."  
"Pneumonia?"  
Andrew looked at Dean, shrugging in defeat and a bit of anger.  
"Yes," he said, "Both lungs. Out of nowhere. And don't you think he'd done anything to catch it."  
"Not anything?"  
"What I said, Mr Hannigan, out of nowhere. 'bout a week after we came back from Maine he got into hospital."  
Sam and Dean exchanged looks. They had both done the same math.  
"Mr Willows, could you tell us a little more about your brother-in-law?"  
Mr Willows shrugged.  
"Mark's been a mate. He and Raymond went to war together, and that's how Carol and I met and got married nine years ago."  
It was then when a female voice called from inside the house.  
"And there are Carol and Olivia," Mr Willows smiled and got up.  
"We'll be going then," said Dean, standing up too. "Thank you for your time. Will it be okay if we come back to you if we have any further questions?"  
"No, that's alright. It's good being able to talk to someone about this."

"Your call?", Dean asked, the moment they were back at their motel.  
"Hex bags are an option, but we'd have to search the house for those," Sam sat down on a small couch, grabbing the hunter's diary. "Maybe it's one of the Fates, though I have no clue what those people could have done to become the Fates' target."  
"Well, we have two marines. Maybe something 'bout the war?"  
"Possible. But how do the two women fit into that? Unless they are genuine accidents."  
"Renegade reaper?"  
"Same question as before, isn't it?"  
Sam's eyes were fixed on the pages.  
"I see you've got yourself a new favourite", Dean teased, and Sam looked up.  
"It's an amazing read. That E.F. was really dedicated, even though I don't have any idea where they got some of their info from."  
"Sam, focus."  
"I am focusing. And as long as we can't reach Kevin, this is possibly the best bit of help we can get."  
Dean huffed and laid down on the bed.  
"Didn't you say most of the stuff in there's bullshit?", he asked. Sam shrugged.  
"I'm starting to doubt that," he turned a page, "Oh!"  
Dean sat up immediately, "What?"  
"E.F.'s got an entry on the Metatron."  
"You're shitting me."  
"No, get this. 'Metatron, the. Celestial scribe, Archangel. Entity combined of the primordial Metatron and the mortal scribe Enoch, an ancestor of Noah. (see 'Book of Enoch') Currently (1945) resides in Dover, Kent, South England. Has a liking for black pudding, winter warmers and toad-in-the-hole.'"  
"_What_?"  
"That's something with sausages they serve in England."  
Dean shook his head.  
"Is that the same son of a bitch we're dealing with?"  
"I doubt there's more than one Metatron."  
"Yeah, but ours spent years and years and years on North America."  
"That's the reason I read this to you. There's something really wrong here."  
"Tell me about it."  
Sam shrugged in response and continued reading.  
"The description fits," he said after a moment, knitting his brow  
"But?"  
"Listen to this. 'I spoke with the celestial scribe and his companion today, and he informed me that they regularly come to Earth to oversee important events of mankind's history that are close ahead.'"  
"And?"  
"Dean, the entry is marked September 1st. A day later World War 2 ended officially with Japan signing the surrender documents."  
"Okay. That is an important event," Dean paused, "What's that about a companion?"  
Sam scanned the text.  
"Says here a woman in her fourties,", he looked up, "Named 'Atty'."  
Dean rolled his eyes.  
"Don't tell me 'Atty' as short for… what's that Fate's name again?"  
"Atropos. And yes, it looks like that."  
"You've got to be kidding. Her?"  
Sam went silent, licking his lips in thought, flipping through the pages.  
"Yes."  
"Wasn't it her job to kill people? Not to… what do I know what you'd call her being around at the end of a war."  
"Dean, I'm starting to think that something's really wrong. And I don't mean with this book."  
"That E.F. was an idiot if he got so many things so wrong," Dean grunted, throwing his hands up.  
"He was right about the muses," his brother countered, and closed the book.  
"Yeah, that's one out of… how many entries are in there?"  
"Dean," Sam frowned.  
"What? What you read there makes it sound as if the bitch was not a coldhearted, selfrighteous Final Destination fangirl. And now she's probably at it again."  
"We don't know that."  
"Yeah, alright. But if we don't find any bags in the house, my first vote's on her."  
It was then that Dean's phone rang. All anger was gone and replaced with bewilderment and suspicion when he looked at the display.  
"What's wrong?", asked Sam.  
"Whoever that 'Victor' you mentioned is…"  
"Did not."  
"Did too… He's in my contacts."  
"What?"  
Dean answered the call, nearly dropping the phone when he heard just who was calling.  
"_Kevin_?"

Let's go back a few minutes, and to the bunker.  
Kevin's current state was somewhere between wanting to smack his head in with the tablet or eat it in frustration.  
He had no idea where Sam and Dean were now, and less of an idea what to do with the text before him. He frowned, resting his head on the table.  
Only to shoot up alarmed, glancing around. He was certain he had heard the bunker's door creak open, followed by the steady sound of feet and a clacking sound.  
He fished for the closest weapon, a gargantuan grimoire, decided almost instantly to ditch it again, and shuffled out of the library.  
"Whoa!", the man Kevin almost bumped into jumped back, raising his hands in defense. "Umm, Kevin Tran?"  
Kevin quirked a brow. The man before him was tall, with dark hair, not much lighter skin, a short, scruffy beard, and carrying a crutch.  
"What if I am?"  
"Well, you're not a demon and I know it's only you and a demon currently here."  
"Wait, what? Who told… Who are you? And where are Sam and Dean?"  
"They're on another hunt, I think," the man smiled, a little awkward, but amiable, "Victor Kite, pleased to meet you. I ran into the two a few days back and they asked me to come here to assist you."  
"Assist me?"  
Using the moment, Kevin did his thinking. Whoever the man was, he was in the bunker, and moving around freely. So, he had to A) know about here, B) have gotten access from Sam and Dean and C) was no demon.  
"You see," the man explained, "I've spent quite some time with the things you're doing, and…"  
"You're not telling me you're a prophet. They said there can be only one."  
The man shrugged.  
"I've been out of everything for a few years."  
"...Coma?"  
The man shrugged.  
Eyeing him again, Kevin finally reached out his hand and shook Victor's.  
"Shall we have a look at what's giving you trouble?", Victor then asked, and Kevin waved him to follow him into the library.  
"This is it," he said, pointing at the tablet. "Stupid thing is completely untranslatable."  
"This is but some of Metatron's drabbles, not the Voynich manuscript. That bloody thing is untranslatable."  
Victor took off the navy blue trenchcoat he was wearing and sat down, gazing at the tablet for a bit.  
"Did Sam and Dean tell you what's up?", asked Kevin, sitting down too.  
"They did. Fallen angels, and you're now looking for a way to reverse the spell," then Victor looked around a little concerned.  
"What's wrong?"  
"Dunno. It's just…" Victor shook his head and looked back at the tablet, whistling through his teeth.  
"Don't tell me you can read that easily," Kevin huffed, leaning back.  
"Unfair advantage of having come across it before."  
"What?"  
"I've seen some other inscriptions, not on tablets, but still, done like this in my time," Victor let out a deep sigh, "Tell me, have you been feeling like you were going crazy lately?"  
"Lately? Try 'past few months'."  
"I meant especially since you started working on this bugger."  
Kevin looked up.  
"Um, yes, actually."  
Victor turned the tablet.  
"No surprise. This thing is a mess. I think you're ought to rename it from 'angel tablet' to 'fuck the prophet over tablet'. The only purpose of this is to drive the reader crazy."  
"What?!"  
"That's a lot of 'whats' in the past few minutes," Victor blinked, earning a brief glare from Kevin. "Apologies. See this and this bit. Those make sense. This part here… says the spell is irreversible."  
Kevin's face fell.  
"Oh, oh, don't worry," Victor reassured, "It's a trick. A nasty little trap. See, these parts are completely untranslatable. Even if you'd try everything. The parts you can read are there to have you keep trying, slowly but steadily rotting away your sanity. Frankly, you can very well claim the text reads 'My hovercraft is full of eels' and be correct."  
Kevin gave him a blank stare.  
"I kid you not," said Victor, and in response Kevin groaned, resting his forehead on the table.  
"That's a bad joke, isn't it?"  
"A trap, as said. It's possible there's a readable, helpful text underneath, but you have to disarm the trap first."  
Another frown.  
"And how do we do that?"  
"Very good question. How much on that topic do you think is there in this hideout?"  
"There's not even anything helpful on the tablets."  
"Bugger," Victor frowned, "I have the means to handle this at my home. Guess that's the reason Dean said I should pick you up."  
"Wha… Pardon?"  
Victor blinked. "I already thought they didn't inform you," he said. "Dean told me to come here, pick you up and get what's needed to translate the tablet."  
"Did he now?"  
Again Victor shrugged, pulling out his phone.  
"Call him and ask."  
Kevin gingerly took the device, and dialed Dean's number.  
/Who are you and how did you get this number?/, came Dean's greeting.  
"Dean? It's me."  
By the sound that followed Dean had nearly dropped the phone.  
/_Kevin_?/  
"Yes. Hey, there, um, there's another prophet here. He's called Victor Kite, he says. Says you sent him here."  
The response was some mumbling for a bit. Dean must have covered the phone with his hand, while discussing things with Sam. When Dean finally continued the call again, he sounded a little confused.  
/He's at the bunker, right?/  
"Yes. But he says we need to go to his home. Says he has something there to translate the tablet. Dean, did you know that thing's mined?"  
/Mined?/  
"Trap to drive the reader crazy."  
/Ouch. You gonna be ok?/  
"Think so. So, what should I do?"  
Again there was some mumbling.  
/Go with Victor. Translate the tablet and find a way to punt those winged dicks back to Heaven./  
"Alright. See you there then."  
He ended the call, handing the phone back to its owner.  
"That's settled then," he said, and Victor nodded.  
"Wrap the tablet and get what you want to take with you," he said and rose, "I'll get some things I need to take from here. For later."  
"Like what?", Kevin asked, suspiciously.  
"Not much. Nothing important. But it could be helpful later on. Sam told me where to find it."  
Kevin tilted his head. This man was odd. But Dean trusted him, even though he had sounded very, very confused. And apparently Sam trusted him to. And what he said about the tablet, taking into account the hammering headache Kevin was having, rang true as well.  
With a nod Kevin left to pack, while Victor strolled off, heading straight for the file room.  
"Back so soon," Crowley called from where he was bound, hearing the steps outside. He did wonder, for the briefest of seconds, about the clacking sound, "Oh, you truly must have miss-" he cut off as the path into the dungeon was pushed open, eyes going wide as he saw the man before him. He had expected Sam or Dean. Even Kevin. But not...  
"...oh...", he breathed, body tensing.  
Victor smiled.  
"Hello, Fergus."

And now, back to the Winchesters.  
"Kevin?"  
Sam made a baffled face as his brother nearly dropped the phone in surprise over the caller. Inwardly; he'd probably have done the same. He signaled Dean if everything was alright, but Dean waved for him to wait, listening to Kevin. Then, lowering the phone and covering it with his hand, Dean looked at his brother for a moment, mouth moving wordlessly. Though it was not hard to guess that Dean was mouthing 'son of a bitch'.  
"What?", Sam asked, and Dean finally found his voice again.  
"Kevin says Victor's a prophet."  
"What?"  
"Beats me. Says he's at the bunker."  
"What?"  
"This is getting a bit too Pulp Fiction-y there, stop that."  
Sam shook his head, gathering himself.  
"Kevin says that Victor's at the bunker and that I sent him there."  
"Wha…", Sam stopped and rolled his eyes.  
"I don't know," Dean hissed back. "I didn't send him there."  
"But he's in the bunker. How else could he have…"  
Dean rose a finger, cutting Sam off, and turning back to Kevin.  
"He's at the bunker, right?"  
"Dean!", Sam hissed, but once again his brother waved for him to wait.  
"Mined?"  
This earned Dean another confused look from Sam and he felt he was making the same expression at the moment.  
"Ouch. You gonna be ok?", Dean continued, before covering the phone again, looking at Sam with a sombre expression.  
"Kevin says the tablet is a trap. To drive the prophet cuckoo."  
Sam knitted his brows. "Would explain some things. Is Kevin ok?"  
Dean nodded, "But he says Victor wants him to come home with him. Says I said so."  
"Well, did you?"  
"Not that I'd know."  
"So what now?"  
"We can't hand Kevin over to some weirdo."  
Sam thought for a moment.  
"A weirdo that's in the bunker, and knows stuff about the tablets we don't. And who warned us about not calling the bunker."  
"When?"  
"What do I know? But he must have done, right?"  
Dean rolled his eyes, thinking about the possibilities, before continuing the call.  
"Go with Victor. Translate the tablet and find a way to punt those winged dicks back to Heaven."  
After that he hung up and turned back to Sam.  
"If this fucks up it's your fault."  
"My fault?" Sam protested.  
"You said to trust 'Victor'."  
"I just said…", Sam frowned "Dean, we don't even know where that 'Victor' lives."  
"Few minutes from Forestburgh, New York."  
Sam blinked.  
"What?"  
"What?", Dean stopped, giving his brother a long, cool look, "I just said where he lives, didn't I?"  
Sam nodded. Slowly. Not breaking eye-contact with his brother.  
"Okay, now it's officially creepy," said Dean, mimicking the nod and gaze.  
"Only now?"  
They both went silent.  
"Back to the case?" Sam then broke the silence that had started to hang in the room.  
"Back to the case."  
Maybe a little too eagerly Sam grabbed the laptop, pulling up the local newspapers.  
"Dean?", he asked after a moment.  
"Yeah?"  
"What are we even looking for?"  
Dean smacked his lips. He had to admit anything was currently better than trying to make sense of this 'Victor'. Why could neither Sam nor he remember it? Why was that guy a prophet? Why did they let him into the bunker?  
Instead of giving Sam an answer, Dean huffed and stormed out, muttering about getting something to drink.  
Knowing it'd be pointless to even try and argue, Sam turned back to the computer, deciding to check for other odd happenstances in the area.

Far away, in their room, Castiel awoke, nearly tumbling out of the bed as his eyes focused on the figure sleeping in the other one.  
He collected himself, and carefully poked Hael's shoulder. She opened an eye, looking up at him.  
"What are you doing in my bed?", Castiel asked.  
"I wanted to try sleeping. I mean, I'd never slept before and you looked so peaceful."  
"Humans often do that. Did it work?"  
Hael sat up.  
"I think I fell asleep. I saw odd things."  
"You dreamed?"  
She nodded, adjusting her clothes.  
"Not too well, though."  
"A nightmare?", Castiel tilted his head and sat down crosslegged. He had never thought that angels could dream. Sure, he had experienced sleep himself, getting drunk and hungry as an angel, but he couldn't remember ever having dreamed, left alone having a nightmare. Probably because he never had had a need for dreams. Neither the prophetic ones, as heaven could directly plant visions into his head, nor for those humans processed what they experienced throughout the day with. He drew a face at the last thought.  
"What's wrong?", Hael asked.  
"I realized I will be dreaming too, sooner or later, and I have seen a lot this brain needs to process."  
"Oh."  
Hael leaned over and gave his hand a sympathetic pat. Castiel looked down as she did so.  
"I should be the one patting your hand," he said. "You are the one that had the bad dream."  
Hael chuckled briefly.  
"Not so much a 'bad dream' as a weird one."  
"Want to talk about it?"  
The response was a shrug.  
"I don't know. You were there. And…", she paused, "You killed me."  
Castiel looked up at her, blinking.  
"Why did I do that?"  
"I don't know," Hael shivered briefly, "I think I wanted to kill you."  
Seeing how miserable the angel was, Castiel sat down next to her, laying an arm around her shoulder.  
"Shh", he said, "It was just a dream. Nothing real."  
As Hael leaned against him and he patted her shoulder, Castiel couldn't help but think of the odd feeling he'd been having for the past few days. The sense of all this being wrong. No, not wrong. Just 'not right'. He tried to think of a comparison to the feeling. The best thing he could come up with was a cassette tape playing song different from those it should have been playing, according to its label. The songs were nice, just not those one expected.  
Castiel smiled a little, feeling a glimpse of pride over that comparison.  
Even though it also made him worry about Dean.

If he would have been with Dean right now, he would have known that those fears were baseless, as Dean was currently sitting outside a small store, making a face that would manage to turn milk sour.  
"Mr Hannigan?", a voice called just as Dean was angrily chewing on a chocolate bar he'd gotten from the store behind him, making him choke for a moment, looking up. The mother of the girl from before stood there, waiting for his response.  
"Yes?", Dean croaked, coughed and cleared his throat, and tried again, "Yes?"  
"Could I ask you something?", the woman asked, looking at Dean a little suspicious. "What exactly is it you're writing about?"

It took Dean a moment to process the question.  
"The tragedy of a family hit by misfortune," he then said. And immediately thought he was sounding like some preacher on TV.  
"Guess that's the heart and soul of being a journalist," the woman said.  
"It's a living."  
The woman smiled at that and sat down next to Dean. She introduced herself as Olivia.  
"In the end it's possibly a good thing you came around," she said, watching the people on the other side of the street. "Our whole family's been pretty shaken up by the last few months."  
"Can imagine."  
"Wouldn't wish on you to actually know."  
Dean went silent for a moment before wrapping up the chocolate bar and stuffing it into his pocket for later.  
"Guess the fact that it's been accidents makes it all the worse," he answered after a moment, and Olivia sighed.  
"Much worse," she said, and rolled her eyes, "At least Susanna's not here to witness that."  
"Who's Susanna?" Dean quirked a brow.  
Olivia blinked at him. "Did I say that out loud?", she asks a little abashed.  
Dean nodded, and she sighed.  
"Oh dear. Well, she's was Carol's stepmother's sister. She died three years ago," Olivia gave an impressive shrug, giving Dean the idea the relationship hadn't been that good.  
"You didn't sit down for smalltalk, right?", he then asked.  
Olivia grinned at him.  
"Just wanted to tell you not turn the events into some bullshit."  
"Wouldn't dare."  
"Good."  
As Olivia got up, Dean followed the lead, and cleared his throat.  
"If we'd have any more questions," he said, "How can we…?"  
"Just ask Carol," Olivia said, adjusting the strap of her bag. "Just not the next two days."  
"Because of what happened?"  
"You already didn't care about that," Olivia rolled her eyes. "No, We're heading down to Oil City this evening."  
There was a certain tone in her voice that made Dean listen up.  
"Nothing you can cancel? I mean, someone just died and -"  
"And someone else is dying," Olivia cut Dean off, sighing. "Carol's uncle. She received the call a bit after you left. Things don't look good since his stroke."  
"Oh."  
"Yes."  
"Umm… All the best for you and your family then."  
"Thank you. And you remember what I said about the story."  
With that, Olivia left, and after a heavy sigh (after all, having a family suffer that much was a lot to swallow even for him), Dean buried his hands in his pockets and headed back to the motel.

Sam had his nose in the diary again when Dean returned.  
"Now it's starting to be weird, Sammy," he greeted his brother upon seeing Sam ike that.  
Looking up, Sam shrugged.  
"I'm looking for something" he said. "Book's got maps."  
"Maps?"  
Sam reached for a folded bit of parchment on the nightstand, opening it, revealing a map of North America.  
"There's also one of Great Britain, Central Europe and a bit of India," he explained.  
"That's... awesome, but what am I looking at here?"  
Sam shrugged.  
"That's what I'm trying to find. Hey, if E.F. thought whatever's there is important enough to make a map, we should try and find just what it is. And this diary's longer than it appears..."  
"That will have to wait," Dean announced, "The Willows are leaving this evening, so we could search their house tonight."  
Sam looked up and closed the book.  
"How do you know?"  
"Ran into the little girl's mother on my walk. She mentioned it," he sat down at the table, frowning, "Did you know they're in for yet another funeral?"  
"What?"  
"Mrs Willow's uncle is dying."  
"No," Sam shook his head in disbelief.  
"That's what Olivia said."  
"Olivia's the girl's mother?"  
"Yes. Guess she needed to talk about that stuff."  
"So, we're going to break into their home while they're at someone's deathbed?"  
"Has that ever really stopped us?"  
Sam frowned in response.  
"And hey," Dean said, "We're doing them a favour. Find the hex bags, find who placed them there and give them what they've got coming."  
Sam just huffed, drawing his brother's attention.  
"What's wrong, Sammy?", Dean asked.  
"Take a guess. The thing with Kevin, and Victor, and all that."  
Dean's face fell.  
"I know what you mean," he said, leaning back in the chair and staring up at the ceiling, "Worse yet, still no word from Cas."  
"Think he'll be alright?"  
Dean sighed, pressing his lips together.  
"We haven't heard from him yet," he then said, leaning onto the table, before fishing for his phone, staring at it as if he was expecting it to ring.  
It rang indeed.  
And Dean dropped it in surprise, earning him a disbelieving smile from his brother.

"How come you didn't hear it?", Hael asked, looking over at Castiel. After she had told Castiel about her dream, they had decided to watch a bit of TV (finding a channel showing 'Life of Brian', to which they both had to admit was funny and more accurate than some other movies on the matter), and somehow their talks had gotten onto the topic of angel radio (because Hael had said 'so that's where that song's from'). Only then did they realise that Castiel, oddly and suddenly, had lost the ability to tune in. Days back already, as it appeared.  
"I really wish I knew," Castiel answered. "I was certain I could still hear it when the Metatron took my grace and sent me to Earth. But now…", he tilted his head, looking at thin air for a moment. "No, nothing."  
"Odd," Hael said, mirroring his move. But then she sat up, knitting her brows, making Castiel sit up equally alarmed.  
"What's wrong?", he asked.  
"I… I've tuned out too…", there was more plain confusion in Hael's voice than actual panic, and she shook her head. "But…"  
"That shouldn't happen."  
"Yes. No. That's not what I meant. It's… It…", she looked at Castiel with wide eyes. "It feels right."  
They looked at each other, before Castiel reached for the phone.  
"What are you doing?", Hael asked.  
"I'm calling Dean. If there's someone who can find answers, it's him," Castiel grinned, "You have to give him that."  
As Castiel dialed Dean's number, Hael smiled back. The same way Sam was currently smiling at Dean many, many miles away as Dean dropped his ringing phone.

Two men were sitting in a small café somewhere in Europe. Probably Europe, and if so, then likely France or Germany. Maybe England. There were lilacs blooming.  
One of those men was not even a man as such. Not that any of the people passing by would have known. They might one day be in for an odd sensation of deja vu, however.  
In any case, Death leaned back in his chair, eyeing the man before him sipping coffee.  
"I must admit, I am surprised by what you did," he said. "And I'm not easily surprised."  
"Oh, don't I know?" the man answered. He was tall, remotely handsome, with dark skin and hair. "When was the last time anyone managed to truly surprise you?"  
Death shrugged. "When God went on that little journey."  
"Name one being in existence that wasn't surprised by that."  
"Those that have no idea of it."  
"Touché," the man put his cup down and looked around.  
"So, you are going to send..."  
"No, no," the man shook his head, "First things first. No use to do that yet."  
"Too high a chance of a big reset?"  
"Yes. Would only be additional work for you."  
"I have 'Reapers' now."  
The man rolled his eyes.  
"Those silly little humans with their silly narrow minds," he said.  
"And yet you're equally trying to help them as you are in need of their help," Death smiled and rose. "Now, if you excuse me, work awaits. And shouldn't you be elsewhere, too?"  
The man quirked a brow:  
"You're the one that interrupted me from what I was doing."  
"Can you blame me, you were the one…"  
"You know they'll be just echoes now. So, mind if I hitch a ride? Not really the best idea to hop around on my own in this situation."  
"Be my guest."  
And they were gone, unnoticed by the passers-by, leaving another guest in the café, who hadn't even realised they were there, to tell the truth, to pay the bill for all of them.

Dean cursed under his breath, scrambling for his phone, answering the call on the last ring.  
"Hello?"  
/Dean?/  
"Cas? Bloody… Where are you?"  
/We are currently staying at a hotel in Sidney./  
"What the hell are you doing in Australia?"  
A few metres to the right Sam was making a face hearing that.  
/Sidney in Nebraska./  
"Oh," Dean cleared his throat awkwardly, while Cas continued.  
/Neither of us has wings anymore./  
"Wait, what? And what do you mean 'us'?"  
/The Metatron tricked me, Dean. It wasn't a trial. It was a spell. He cast all angels out of Heaven. He stole my grace. I am human, Dean./  
"That…", Dean stopped himself. 'Son of a bitch' just wasn't the right term for the Metatron here. "You're alright?"  
/Yes. The angel Hael is here with me./  
"Is he one of the good guys?"  
/She. Currently. And yes. She is./  
Dean went silent.  
/Dean?/  
"This gonna sound weird, but… I knew that that stuff happened to you. That thing with your grace, that you're human. The stuff with the Metatron."  
/...How?/  
"Hell if I know."  
/Dean? Are you alright?/  
"Yeah. Just weirded out, buddy. Not the first time the past week."  
/Are you certain everything's alright?/  
"You tell me. Hey, we're currently in Pennsylvania. You stay where you are, okay?"  
/We could come to the bunker./  
"No, Cas. Listen. Stay away from there. You hear me? You keep an eye on yourself and stay where you are, comprende?"  
There was a sigh.  
/Comprende. If it becomes unavoidable to move, I shall contact you again./  
"Alright. Take care."  
/You too./  
Dean hung up, sighing, and combing his fingers through his hair, frowning.  
"Where do you want Cas to stay away from?", Sam asked, and Dean looked up, not answering for a moment.  
"The bunker," he then admitted.  
"Why?" Sam shook his head, to which Dean arched a brow.  
"Hey, after what happened the last few days, and with the call from Kevin, I…" Dean took a deep breath, "It felt wrong, okay? Just so damned wrong to have him go there. I can't explain it, okay?"  
With a frown Sam raised his hands defensively.  
"Man, calm down," he said, and stood up. "I'll go and get us something to eat, and then we can see if we can find anything about those numbers before we go searching for the hex bag, ok?"  
Not that Sam waited for an answer. He was out of the room even before his sentence was finished.  
Dean, in frustration, slammed his fist onto the table, making a face indicating that there'd been a bit too much force behind that the very next second.

"Okay, I got everything," Kevin called stepping into the main hall of the bunker. Victor was sitting on the steps, idly reading something on his tablet.  
"There you are," said Kevin, finally making Victor look up. "Been looking for you."  
"Oh, and I've been looking for you," smiled an apologising smile and put his tablet back into his bag. "This place is bigger than it appears. Guess we managed to be looking for each other on opposite ends for each other. So, you're ready?"  
Kevin nodded, but then frowned.  
"I forgot to ask Dean when they'll join us."  
Victor cocked his head, "Well, he has my number. I'm certain he'll call when they're on their way."  
A few minutes later they were leaving the bunker.  
There was folk rock playing, and Kevin was more or less burrowing himself into the fake-fur cover over the passenger's seat.  
"How did you become a prophet?", he asked somewhere near Hastings, Nebraska.  
Victor shrugged.  
"It just happened," he said. "Had contact with Heaven, even though I didn't want to, and bam, I'm out to save the arses of two lads from Kansas. And you? Dean didn't tell me that much about you. Sam said you were in advanced placement."  
Kevin shrugged as well.  
"Yes. Then Sam and Dean found a tablet that gave instructions on how to kill some monsters named Leviathans and, well, bam, I'm also out to save their butts."  
"Leviathan?"  
"Leviathans, plural."  
"Nice one. But what did you need a special tablet for? The Leviathan was slain by the Archangel Gabriel, so go find his sword or spear and the problem should be non-existent."  
"I think Gabriel's dead. Sam once mentioned he died when they stopped the Apocalypse a few years back."  
"Oh, that one," Victor seemed unimpressed. "Tell you what. Archangels don't die. Neither do other angels or demons. That's the whole idea behind being immortal. The old bugger's around, I bet you. And if not, he's probably regenerating somewhere."  
Kevin gave him a rather weirded out look.  
"Tell you what," Victor said, "You can consider yourself lucky to be a reader, prophet-skill-wise. I got a crapload of knowledge about Heaven and Hell. And the reading thing. No wonder the coma happened."  
Now Kevin gave him a sympathetic look.  
"You don't have it better," Victor mentioned, after smiling back softly. "Dean said they've been telling you they got your mother."  
Kevin's face fell, but Victor grinned.  
"They're lying. 100% certain, they're lying."  
"How would you know?"  
"Told you, knowledge of Heaven and Hell. All that stuff Dante and Milton didn't manage to cover. Here's the deal. If demons actually have someone or something to blackmail a person with, they will briefly skip with said person to Hell and show them what's fact and what isn't. Did they do that?"  
"No."  
"See. So, going by what Sam and Dean said 'bout your mom, if a demon actually got their hands on her, 100% certain she handed their butts to them and walked out."  
A grin spread on Kevin's face for a second, before it fell again.  
"But why didn't she call me then?"  
"Easy. Even though they can't get your mom herself, they can still make contact impossible. Hey, they need to pretend they got her."  
Kevin was, to put it mildly, bemused. Then a thought struck him.  
"Erm…"  
"Yes?"  
"Did they tell you we had the demon that claimed to…"  
Victor smiled and pointed at his bag that laid at Kevin's feet.  
"The snowglobe."  
"What?"  
Instinctively, however, Kevin picked up the bag and pulled a small snowglobe from it. The confused impression already on his face rose several levels in bafflement.  
"But that's…"  
"Couldn't leave Fergus behind, after all."  
"Fer… you mean Crowley."  
Victor shrugged.  
"Fergus' his real name. Suits him much better than 'Crowley'. If you ask me, he's not much of a Crowley. Dean's more of a Crowley than him."  
Kevin let that sink in, still staring at the tiny, unheard, and obviously frustrated figure in the small globe.  
"How did you get him in there?", he then asked and Victor laughed.  
"There are some nifty tricks that come with knowing things about Heaven and Hell."  
Thinking about this, Kevin finally nodded, before looking at Victor again.  
"What happens if I shake it?"

It was midnight when Sam and Dean arrived at the Willows' house.  
"So we're clear?" Dean grumbled, looking up at the dark windows, "We go in, stop this, head to the bunker, get our stuff, go to Victor and see what all this is about."  
"Dean, that's the fifth time you've ask if I got it," Sam grunted and stepped out of the car, "Calm down."  
With a deep, grumbling frown Dean followed.  
"Oh, excuse me for worrying a little bit about the things that happened since last Tuesday," he sneered, getting closer to the house after casting some quick glances around. "I mean, hey, it's just your sudden recovery along with jumping locations, Cas being human, Kevin being tricked, this Victor showing up and…"  
Sam suddenly grabbed his brother's shoulder and made a hushing gesture, before pointing up.  
"Someone's in there," he said.  
The two stared up at the window behind which they had just seen a light, before they exchanged looks.  
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering, Sammy?"  
Sam nodded.  
"Either an actual burglar or just the guy we're looking for."  
"Yeah. Come on."  
They went around back and climbed into the garden, sneaking towards the, as they now expected, open backdoor, shuffling into the house.  
Whoever the third person was, they were carrying a bag and a flashlight, and, as Sam and Dean found them sneaking around in the parent's room, messing with the photographs on the nightstands.  
Sam and Dean leaned in the door as the intruder fumbled one of the pictures out of its frame, and Dean cleared his throat.  
The man, as it then became apparent, spun around, dropped the picture, raised his flashlight like a weapon and charged at the two, obviously certain that his bulky frame gave him an advantage.  
There was a crash and a thud and a yelp, and the man was down, Dean kneeling on his back and twisting his arm, while Sam wandered off, phone on his ear.  
"Okay, man, who are you?", Dean asked, managing to transport his glare in his voice.  
"None of your business."  
Dean pressed his knee down, and the man yelped again.  
"I know that this isn't your house. So what are you doing here?"  
"I'm just getting what's mine!", the man hollered, and Dean pressed his knee down again.  
"At midnight. When no one's at home. Suuuure," he said as the man gave a yelp. "Okay, dude, once more. Who are you?"  
"Could ask you the same. You're not cops."  
"We're concerned citizens that saw you sneaking around someone else's house," Dean hissed, getting angry. In fact, the man's behaviour was just adding to his already existing frustration with the general situation of the past week.  
"Police is on the way," Sam then interrupted, pocketing his mobile and picking up the bag the man had dropped.  
"Get your hands off that!" the man snarled again, earning another well-applied press against the arm from Dean.  
Sam rummaged through the bag, picking out some old books and a bit of jewellery.  
Dean frowned at the man.  
"How exactly is that 'your's', dude?"  
"They should have never gotten it. They did some of their voodoo-shit on Camille."  
"What?", Dean frowned and made a face clearly indicating that he was getting absolutely tired of this man and whatever he had to say.  
It was a good thing, maybe for Dean, maybe even more so for the man, that the police arrived that moment.  
A few minutes later, as the man was driven off, Sam and Dean explained their version of the story to the officer.  
"So you're reporters?", said officer asked, after the two had introduced themselves. As Hannigan and Brite, that is.  
"Yeah," said Sam, with a bit of an awkward grin. "You see, Officer, we had been talking to Mr and Mrs Willows this morning, and we learned they would not be at home tonight. So, when we were heading off to the next city to work on our stories, and saw a light in the window, we didn't think much and went to see what was wrong."  
"We know we should have contacted you before acting," Dean added, looking as innocent as his brother, and sounding just as stilted.  
"Yes, you should have," said the officer, shaking his head. "We're not on TV, acting like heroes won't turn out good for you if you don't know what you're doing."  
The officer turned his attention away from Sam and Dean (after those two had nodded in total agreement) and towards the direction they had taken the burglar, and where two of his colleagues were talking.  
"Now, I must ask you to stay in the city, should further questions arise," he then mumbled, and after agreeing and giving the name of their hotel, Sam and Dean trotted back to the Impala.  
With all the police around, searching the house was all but impossible.  
"And what now?", asked Sam, frowning, "Come back when they're gone?"  
"Small town," answered Dean, starting the engine "The neighbours will be worse than hellhounds out to drag some poor bastard to hell now. Not a chance."  
"Back to the motel then?"  
"Yeah," Dean mumbled, driving off.

"At least we know who's behind this."  
It was now only a bit later. The boys were back at their room, Sam sitting on the bed, reading the journal again, while Dean had, only moments ago, booted up the laptop and was staring at the screen now. The 'uh-huh' he gave in response to Sam's statement made it clear that he was concentrating on whatever he was looking at.  
"Dean?"  
Dean looked up and waved Sam over.  
"We know exactly who's behind this," he said, a little triumphantly.  
"Who?"  
Dean pointed at the screen.  
"Remember how that guy said something 'bout 'Camille'? Camille Parks was Mrs Willow's stepmother. Died about two years ago. Pneumonia."  
Sam sat down, knitting his brows.  
"That family _is_ unlucky," he said. "Now you think it's her ghost?"  
"Naw. Not with that guy saying 'they did some voodoo on her'. We've seen some summonings go wrong, but, man, this is just some racist bullshit, I tell you."  
"You sound as if you're certain."  
"I am. That guy is Greg Bagley, Mrs Willow's step-cousin."  
"And?"  
"Olivia mentioned his mother, and how it's good she's not around anymore to see the Willows like that. Said she died three years back. Did a bit of research on them."  
He brought up an article.  
"Bagley's family's trying to sue the Willows and the rest of Camille's new family for the past five years."  
"Over what?"  
Dean pointed, and Sam looked.  
"They think the Willows brainwashed Camille into changing her testament?"  
"With 'voodoo'. Article's not giving what they said, so I think whatever they told the paper contained lots of words starting with 'N'."  
Sam frowned and rubbed his face.  
"Bloody hell," he muttered.  
"Yep."  
"And now that guy cooked up some spells himself to get at them?"  
"Just what I've been thinking."  
Again Sam frowned, at a loss for words.  
"So, screw not getting back there and go back for the bags?", he finally asked.  
"Yeah."

"It's very funny. And very intelligent," Castiel stated, earning a chuckle from Hael, who was reclining on the other bed.  
"You only notice that now?" she teased. Castiel smiled and closed the book Hael had given him to read.  
"But odd to think that…" he didn't get further. There was a knock from the door, and Castiel rose to see who it is, but Hael pulled him back down.  
"You're human," she whispered. "And it's past midnight. Let me handle this, just in case."  
She got up, took a deep breath and walked over to the door.  
"Yes?", she asked, without opening.  
There was a moment of quiet, before the door was forced open, causing Hael to stagger back, and forcing Castiel to dive behind the bed.  
A man stood in the doorframe, looking very angry. He glared at Hael, who was scrambling to stand up-right again.  
"What's that all about?", the man barked, pointing at Castiel.  
"That's none of your business," Hael barked back.  
"It's his fault we fell."  
"No, it's the Metatron's," Hael hissed, only now noticing she had positioned herself between Castiel and the other angel.  
From outside there was the sound of other rooms being opened.  
"Did he tell you that?", the man said pointing. "You stupid little thing. You're going down with him then." If it had needed any more confirmation that the other man was an angel, him summoning up his blade provided that the very next moment.  
"Hael, watch out!"  
Castiel didn't know why exactly he had shouted that. It felt a little silly, seeing that Hael was perfectly aware of the other angel coming at her.  
Hael dodged away at first, making a motion to bring up her own blade, but the other angel was fast. He spun around, driving his blade straight into her body. Hael let out a brief gasp, and then...  
Silence fell. It fell awkwardly, and Hael looked down at the angel blade in her stomach, then up at the one who had just stabbed her. He was, obviously just as confused about the utter lack of a death-proclaiming lightshow as Hael and Castiel, who was peeking up from behind the bed, were.  
"What the hell…", the guy managed, and Hael grabbed the blade's handle and pulled it out. She made a gesture as if to finally summon up her own blade. There was a "fwoosh"-like sound, as she summoned up a blade indeed. Again, everyone stared at the others bewildered. As the fire detector sprang to life, the guy made a run for it.

"Anything?" Dean asked, as Sam came trotting down the stairs. Sam shook his head.  
"Nothing," he said, combing fingers through his hair, sorting his thoughts. "The most magical thing I found is an Ankh-amulet, but they probably got that in some random jewellery store or at the carnival or something."  
"So nothing to explain what's going on?", said Dean, standing up from looking at the lower shelves in the living room.  
"Not if you haven't found anything."  
Dean shook his head. "Oddest thing on this end is a lot of german books."  
"Oh?"  
"Yeah," he pointing over his shoulder. "Did you know that they had a 50 shades thing in german before 50 shades was even written?"  
This earned him a long, cool look from Sam, who was obviously torn between the questions 'How would you know' and 'you can read german'.  
He settled for "Oh-kay…" however.  
"What?", Dean quirked a brow, and dusted off his clothes.  
"Nothing,", said Sam, "What now?"  
Dean gave a theatrical shrug.  
"Beats me," he looked at his brother for a moment, "Think there might not be anything weird this time?"  
"You mean it's really just a streak of horrible coincidences?"  
They stared at each other, unimpressed.  
"Naw," the answer came in unison.  
"But what is it then?", asked Dean, burrowing his hands in his pockets, resigning.  
"Cursed objects?"  
"Possible. But that'd mean we'd have to wait till they're back, so we can ask what they bought the last few months." Dean made a face. "No, scratch that. Cursed object would mean everyone that died touched it."  
The two looked at their hands, making faces.  
"You're sure?", Sam asked.  
"Yeah," Dean answered, failing gloriously to sound convincing.  
"Should we… have another look around? See if we can find anything all of them might have touched?"  
Dean nodded, and they headed off again.

"I am out of ideas then," Castiel admitted, looking out of the window. He and Hael had decided to leave the hotel for the next town after what had happened. They had decided to stick together, and somehow see if they can manage to ward Castiel off against the other angels.  
That decision had come quick. What has been bothering them much more was the reason they, taking everything into account, were still alive.  
"I'm just saying,", Hael said, looking at the street ahead, "it felt oddly right. Looking back at everything, it felt more right than anything else i have ever done."  
Castiel sighed, but there was hope in that sigh.  
"I understand what you mean," he said. He had felt the same, occasionally. Even more so since last Tuesday.

Around sunrise, Sam and Dean were back at the motel, still discussing the outcome of their search.  
"This is stupid," Dean rubbed his head, feeling a headache grow. "There has to be something."  
"We're pretty much out of possibilities," said Sam, typing away on the laptop.  
"I'm not buying for a second that all this is just bad luck," grunted Dean and laid down on the bed, arms crossed behind his head and staring at the ceiling as if it knew the answer but stubbornly refused to tell him anything.  
"Me neither. But we have found nothing. No hex bags, no cursed objects," Sam sighed, "Not even any record of the house having been the site of anything unusual."  
"So, we don't know anything more than when we started?"  
Sam shrugged, defeated.  
"I'll go and see if I can find any clues in the family history."  
Dean frowned and closed his eyes for a second.  
"Dean!"  
Dean almost fell off the bed as his brother called him.  
"I'm awake," he managed, looking around slightly bewildered.  
"I know, but you've been out for two hours."  
In response, Dean frowned, sitting up straight.  
"Found anything worth waking me?", he frowned, rubbing his eyes, and yawned.  
"You won't believe this," Sam said with a smile, leaning onto the table. "Okay, so, I did some research on the family's history. Just checking if there's anything odd, anything we overlooked. Any clue to what we're dealing with. Nothing unusual on Mr Willows' side, but Mrs Willows is a complete different case."  
"Meaning?"  
"All that german stuff we found?"  
"Yeah?"  
"I thought there might a be a connection to the german speaking minorities here, and I was right. Mrs Willows' family came here in the 19th century."  
"From Germany?"  
"And Transylvania."  
"You're shitting me."  
Sam shook his head.  
"Transylvanian saxons," he said. "Well, her dad's side. Her mom's side's from Hanover."  
"Sam, that's a nice bit of history, but not helpful. 'Cause we're sure as hell not dealing with a vampire here."  
Sam's grinned.  
"What if we are?"  
Dean gave his brother a long, empty look.  
"Uh, Sam, you do know that we have already dealt with vampires? And those bitches are nothing like this?"  
"But Nachzehrer are."  
"Nach-what?"  
Sam held the journal under Dean's nose.  
"Those."  
Dean read.  
The entry was short, but to the point. Nachzehrer were a form of vampires. Never leaving their coffin, but instead chewing, sucking and biting on everything that came remotely close to their mouth. Through that, they sucked away strenght and life from their victims, until they died, seemingly weakened by sickness. The way to kill a Nachzehrer was simple. Dig up the coffin, place a coin in the thing's mouth, chop off the head, and place it between its legs.  
"So," Dean said after finishing the entry, "We're dealing with some lazy ass vampires?"  
Sam nodded.  
"When I saw where Mrs Willows' family's from, I remembered that entry. Then I did some more research on them, and woke you up."  
Sam thought it would not be necessary to mention that said research consisted mostly of trying to figure out how the name was pronounced.  
"Soooo…", Dean finally said, letting everything sink in, "Someone in the family died and turned lazy ass vampire with a nailbiting problem."  
"Yes."  
Eyebrow quirked, still looking in the process of waking up, Dean tilted his head at Sam.  
"And who do you think?" he asked.  
Sam shrugged.  
"That's easy. Her mom. Dies, gets stuck on Earth, sees how her husband marries again, gets angry, turns Nachzehrer."  
Dean nodded, looking satisfied.  
"Yeah, I think we got it. So, where's she buried?"  
"Woodlawn Cemetery, just down the road."  
"Woodlawn, huh? Okay, that one sounds familiar." Dean blinked a little bemused.  
"I think Bobby had a job to do there once."  
"That might be it."  
"Though that might have been another Woodland Cemetery."  
Dean shrugged. "The important thing is this: we go there," he paused as Sam frowned at him. "What?"  
"Dean, it's Sunday," Sam checked his watch, "6.13 am. Won't do any good digging up graves on a Sunday."  
"We've done worse," Dean protested. "And a whole family's safety's at stake."  
"I know, but this isn't some out of town, no-one-will-notice cemetery. If someone sees us and we get arrested the Willows won't have any chance."  
"I hate it when you play the voice of reason," Dean huffed; Sam huffed back, and Dean sighed. "Okay, we go there once it's dark, get things done, go home," he paused again, remembering something, "Well, go to Forestburgh. Get an explanation from Victor and see what he and Kevin can do with the tablets."  
"There's a plan."  
"I drive, you sleep. You look as bad as you did last Monday…I think", Dean grinned, "Probably why you're playing the sensible one again."

"What do you mean 'You don't know'?" Abaddon furrowed her brows, looking annoyed and bewildered at the low-ranked demon she was talking to.  
"There's none of us with hounds that size," the demon, currently possessing the body of an old man who had probably died years ago already. "Even Crowley's are just like this," he gestured, "and's he's the king."  
"He's a salesman," Abbadon snarled.  
The other demon shrugged.  
"He's sort of responsible for Lucifer's demise, so, there's a point in giving him that place."  
Abaddon glared again, lunged forward and grabbed the demon's collar.  
"A low-blow salesman on the throne. I have seen where that brought Hell."  
The other demon gulped, obviously fearing for his existence.  
"Find out whose hound that was," Abaddon snarled again, letting him go. "And then go to Hell. And tell them I'm coming."

"That's just great," Dean frowned, looking as if he wanted to strangle someone.  
They had been waiting the entire day to go to the cemetery. They had looked for every bit of additional information about Nachzehrer and the grave they needed to dig up. They had brought the coin and an axe. They had everything they needed.  
Except a corpse.  
"How can there be so much information about someone, but NOT that they've been cremated?", Dean groaned and flailed his arms, obviously very unhappy with the general situation.  
Sam just shrugged, leaning on the shovel resignedly.  
"What now?" He finally asked, watching Dean for a moment.  
"I don't know," Dean frowned. "We're running from one dead end into the other. First the hex bags, then that… what was he again? Step-cousin?"  
"I think so."  
"Yeah, that guy and now…", inspiration hit Dean, though it was probably more of a kick to the groin. "Hold on a second." He looked at Sam.  
"What?"  
"It's a stupid idea, but… that step-aunt woman of Mrs Willows'..."  
"Yeah?"  
"She's not buried here too, is she?"  
Sam squinted at his brother.  
"How should I know," he said, fumbling for his phone, "What are you thinking about?"  
"It's just an idea."  
"You think she turned…?"  
"We can't be wrong about that whole Nachzehrer thing as well, now can we?"  
"We might be."  
"Oh, c'mon, Sam, we've never been wrong that often in a row."  
"Just like we've never ran into monsters that weren't out to kill anyone?"  
Dean frowned again and shrugged.  
"I know, I know, that was weird enough. But damn it, Sammy, we're the Winchesters, we don't make these mistakes."  
Sam nodded, turning his attention to his phone.  
"What you doing?", Dean asked, craning his neck.  
"Checking if that step-aunt's buried here," Sam answered. "I mean, the only person we could ask right now is that guy that broke into the Willows' house. And I don't think he's going to tell us. Susanna Bagley, right?"  
"Yeah."  
"Let's see… No… no… There we go."  
"Good news?"  
"Yeah. She's buried here too. We're lucky."  
"What are we waiting for then?"

Mrs Bagley's grave was situated as far away from where they had buried her sister's ashes as was possible without leaving the cemetery.  
"At least this looks like there's a coffin down there," Dean stated and started digging.  
Sam stood still for a moment, lost in thoughts.  
"Are you going to help, Sammy, or just stand there letting your glorious mane flow in the nightly breeze?"  
Frowning, Sam started digging as well, looking at Dean again after a moment.  
"If she really turned, that'd be really messed up."  
Dean pondered for a moment.  
"You mean cause she doesn't have links back to Germany?"  
"Yeah. It's several levels of fucked-up having someone turn into a creature from a foreign culture to harass a family out of racism."  
"That'd actually be more than several levels of fucked-up."  
"That's what I'm saying."  
Shovel after shovel of dirt landed on the ground next to the grave, till Sam suddenly stopped, raising his hand to have his brother follow the motion.  
"Dean, did you hear that?"  
"Hear what?"  
"Hold still," Sam shifted his weight a little, which the ground beneath him answered with a nasty cracking and creaking sound. Followed closely by an equally nasty slurping.  
Sam and Dean looked at each other, obviously having the same thought, scrambling out of the grave just in time before the coffin's lid gave in.  
Only to realise that the lid, although it had been scraped and scratched thin, did not give in, but out, as the thing that had been inside pulled itself out of the grave.  
"Oh fuck, are you ugly", Dean mumbled, drawing a face at the creature hissing at him. It certainly had once been human, but what it was now looked as if someone had tried to dissolve it in acid only to find the thing widely immune to it. The dress the corpse was wearing hung down its frame in rags, and the hair was a similar mess. Even after all this time, there was skin and tissue here and there, and everything had a gnawed on look to it. Probably the result of the corpse actually gnawing and biting and chewing on whatever it could chew on.  
Despite obviously lacking muscle or anything else needed to move, it was astonishingly quick, and leaped at Dean, who managed to duck away at the very last moment. At least enough to avoid the creature gnawing off his face. It did get his leg, however, causing an agonised, although more surprised yelp as it dug its teeth into his lower calf.  
The yelp, however, was followed closely by a bang, as Sam swung his shovel against the thing's head. The head, lacking tissue to properly attach it to the rest of the body, flew off, landing hissing and snarling a few feet away.  
The body collapsed, and after making sure Dean was remotely alright, Sam ran over to the severed head, putting his foot onto it.  
While he fumbled his pockets for a coin, Dean shoved the rest of the corpse back into the grave, grimacing, pained and annoyed the whole time.  
"Stop biting," Sam frowned at the head, having to use more of his limbs than should be necessary to maneuver the coin into its mouth. The moment he managed that, however, the head became still, and Dean came hopping over, handing him a roll of duct tape.  
"Duct tape, Dean, really?", Sam raised a brow, head (not his own) in his hands.  
"Bitch bit me, bitch gets duct taped," he paused. "Okay, that was a creepy statement. She still bit me."  
Moments later, after placing the secured head back in the coffin, Sam was filling the grave up again, while Dean sat nearby, inspecting the wound in the light of his flashlight.  
"You gonna be alright?", Sam finally called, little concerned.  
"Yeah, gonna wash it out with holy water. Man, that bitch had a toothpaste commercial bite."  
"Does that surprise you?"  
"Not really. Have you seen the thing and the coffin? Makes you wonder who else she killed before we came along."  
"Good thing we did then, even if it wasn't planned."  
"Yeah. As for plans: Next stop Forestburgh?"  
"Yeah."

It was some hours later, a bit after sunrise, at a small gas station, when Dean sat in the open car, checking the bite from last night. He held a bottle of holy water in his hand, a bottle of disinfectant on the ground before him, making faces as he prodded at the wound.  
"If you keep poking it like that, you will get a plain ass infection instead," Sam commented, checking the road map in the driver's seat.  
Dean huffed and bandaged the wound again.  
"I think we can nominate this one for most weird-ass case we ever had," he said, turning around to look at Sam.  
Sam nodded, not hiding that that title did amuse him.  
"And that's coming from us," he grinned, tracing the roads on the map.  
"Hey, it can't get any weirder."  
That moment, a young man approached.  
"Excuse me", he said, drawing both Winchester's attention.  
"Yeah?" said Dean, a bit bemused.  
"You are Sam and Dean Winchester, right?"  
"Yeah?", both brothers said in unison, not really having a good idea where this was going. It was early morning and they were in the middle of nowhere, after all.  
"Umm…" the young man hesitated, shuffling awkwardly, before looking at the two again. "How can I get you two to not kill me?", he asked, as his eyes flashed black.


	3. Winchester's Life Of Monsters

_A/N: Thank you for the reviews. I think an explanation is in need: This story was falsely marked 'complete' as I originally planned on posting the full stories as separate works. But on here it's easier to have them as one work, with each 'episode' as a single chapter. If you want to follow the story while it is written, the story is up over on Ao3. Now, to answer two questions that came up 'smacking one's lips' is that plopping sound some people make when they are annoyed but unphased by what just happened (don't know how to explain it). The 'bloody hell', just wait, there's an explanation in a later episode. So, ones again, thanks for the reviews and enjoy your stay._

* * *

"You are Sam and Dean Winchester, right?", the young man had asked. The young man that had seemingly come out of nowhere, approaching the brothers as they were having a stop at a small gas station. The same young man that, upon having the two's attention, revealed himself to be a demon.  
A demon, that had then not only ask how he can get the two not to kill him, but currently had his arms raised in defense.  
Sam had sprung up the moment the man's eyes had flashed black. Dean would have done the same, but had thought better of it, seeing as he was currently wearing only one shoe, had his jeans' leg rolled up, and was disinfecting the nasty wound from a case they'd closed only hours ago.  
"I came to ask for your help," the demon babbled, arms still up. "You are the experts on such stuff and I'm really in need of someone of your caliber," "What?", Sam managed, stance still that of someone ready to attack.  
"You're good with that whole supernatural stuff and you're really the only ones I can ask… Could you find a town for me? I lost it."

-TBC-


End file.
